A young designer's brainstorms almost became the Lincoln Memorial

John Russell Pope remains a legendary architect today — he designed the Jefferson Memorial, the National Archives, and the West building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. But in the 1910s, he was part of the mix for an even more iconic new building: the Lincoln Memorial.

As the freshly created Lincoln Memorial Commission later reported, they kicked around a bunch of ideas for the monument. Even the location was up for grabs: there were "suggestions that the memorial take the form of a bridge across the Potomac and of a road to Gettysburg."

Eventually, the commission settled on a traditional memorial near the Washington Monument, and they held a competition to decide the design. The budget — later set at an unprecedented $2 million — was a prize worth winning, and many different designers submitted their best ideas. The list was eventually whittled down to two: Henry Bacon and John Russell Pope.

When the dust settled, Henry Bacon was chosen as architect and Daniel Chester French sculpted Lincoln. Though some thought Bacon's design was too showy (critics preferred a simple log cabin), his plan went forward. The Lincoln Memorial & American Life says the deck was stacked in Bacon's favor from the beginning, but Pope almost played spoiler to the winning designer.

In addition to the pyramid seen above, Pope had other bizarre, beautiful, and bold proposals for the national "temple" to Lincoln. He drew up a ziggurat, a Mayan temple, and an expansive Greek monument. His original designs show that iconic landmarks aren't born — they're made. And sometimes, very different ones could have been built.