The new St. Paul's Cathedral

The new St. Paul's Cathedral, redesigned by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London in 1666, was opened in 1697.
Suppose Sir Christopher Wren had not been involved with the rebuilding of St. Paul's Cathedral. Who shall take Wren's place?
 
The problem is that Sir Christopher Wren was the designer of not only St Paul's Cathedral, but also 53 other churches as well as many secular buildings of note in London after the Great Fire.

What if young Issac Newton put his mind to architecture?
 

Jonathan, this design is trés magnifique! Who is the designer?

That's Old St. Pauls. The one which burnt down in the Fire (though it had lost its spire about a century earlier).

As for alternatives to Wren, Newton was completely uninterested in architecture from a very earlier age and would require a complete personality transplant. About the only alternative I can think of would be Robert Hooke (who did design Bethlem Hospital), but unlike Wren he had wider interests, worked slower and was much harder to work with.

Really, the main problem is that there's basically nobody other than Wren who can do it. Hooke wouldn't want the job, Hawksmoor is a toddler, Vanbrugh is in his nappies, Indigo Jones is dead and John Webb died in 1672 so even if he started things he's not really around long enough to actually do it.
 
I prefer Old St. Paul's, myself. They just needed to replace the steeple which got destroyed in 1560 and do some ordinary repairs and renovations.

That's what the Brandons do in my timeline.
 
Talman is still very young when St. Paul's actually burnt down but if you delay the rebuilding process with some arguments he could be an option.
 
I prefer Old St. Paul's, myself. They just needed to replace the steeple which got destroyed in 1560 and do some ordinary repairs and renovations.

That's what the Brandons do in my timeline.

I wouldn't say that I prefer it, but certainly that's what Wren was initially contracted to do, though I wouldn't be surprised if that had revealed further issues. The damage after the fire was just too extensive for it to be saved though.

Talman is still very young when St. Paul's actually burnt down but if you delay the rebuilding process with some arguments he could be an option.

Hmm. Seems more Vernacular than Ecclesiastical in terms of architecture, and being a pupil of Wren you run into the very big problem that you need to somehow remove Wren from the picture without also effectively removing Talman. Talman also has Hooke's issue of being brusque and difficult to work with, which could severely hamper negotiations with the various authorities involved.
 
Simple, give Wren a fatal illness and an early death. It wasn't like there was a shortage in Restoration London.
 
Simple, give Wren a fatal illness and an early death. It wasn't like there was a shortage in Restoration London.

It's a question of when you do it.

Talman was active from ~1690, and the absolute earliest we can consider him a possibility is 1678, though he didn't really do anything for a while. Wren was charged to design the new St. Paul's in 1669 and construction started in 1675. The later you have such an illness, the less it's going to butterfly away other people's careers, but essentially it's got to happen before the Warrant design of 1674 or they're just going to hire someone to follow Wren's plans, so you're looking at early 1670s there. I just don't think that the Cathedral Chapter are going to sit around for 5 years looking for someone before Telman's on the scene.
 
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