Last year the Georgetown University library held an exhibition on various dramatic proposals that would have affected the campus, that is if they were actually built. Sadly, GM missed the exhibition, but the library’s website has many of the materials.
Above you’ll see the proposed foreign service school building from 1949. It would rise above the Potomac. Here’s another version of it:
Here is an image produced to raise money to construct an extension of the original quad. The project was dubbed “Greater Georgetown”. Ultimately only two of the three proposed buildings were constructed: Copley Hall and White-Gravenor. The third unbuilt building was to be named Poulton Hall.
Below was a library proposed in 1954. It was never built, and when the school got around to designing the library it did build, the controversial brutalist style was ultimately chosen instead:
And finally, this atrocious design was proposed in the early 1980s. The massive building seen at the southwest corner of the campus is, as the exhibit’s website describes:
a complex at the entrance that would be a photovoltaic solar facility designed to serve future needs in the areas of telecommunications and computer science, as well as provide space for guest accommodation, conference facilities, and offices. The Master Plan noted that the complex would add aesthetic interest to the Georgetown skyline.
“add aesthetic interest to the Georgetown skyline”? The 80s had a pretty loose definition of aesthetic interest.
Make sure to check out the whole page!
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
Glad you highlighted this, TM 😉
Poulton Hall does exist, albeit off the quad and on the other side of 37th Street.
There’s some even more interesting ones that I’ve seen… not sure if they’re on the website anywhere. Regardless, pretty remarkable what could have been, for good or ill.
The ship on a “SFS Building” has likely sailed, for both bureaucratic and pedagogical reasons. The ‘Georgetown skyline’ – from Rosslyn and the river, anyway – is probably fixed, as far as the University is concerned. Still, the evolution of the campus continues to be the most dynamic part of Georgetown.