Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America
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With the prime contract awarded to the low bidder, the experienced tunnel-driving firm of Booth & Flinn, work could begin under the general superintendence of Michael L. Quinn. A ceremonial ground-breaking took place on March 31, 1922, at which, according to a newspaper report, “Mr. Holland took a pick from the hands of John Bazone, a laborer, and drove it into the earth. Mr. Quinn thrust a shovel under the loosened earth and threw it to one side.” Though the workmen wanted their tools back, neither Holland nor Quinn would give his up, for each was to be plated with silver and displayed in the respective ceremonial wielder’s office.
Ground-breaking in New Jersey did not take place until May 31, and then clandestinely, according to a newspaper account. Crossing the river from New York, Holland and several representatives of the Erie Railroad Company, including chief engineer R. C. Falconer, and of the contractor, Booth & Flinn—perhaps about a dozen in all—stole across ferry property toward the Erie Railroad yard, in order to avoid being seen on the streets. After convincing several policemen that the group was not up to anything improper, they reached the railroad yard, where “Mr. Falconer, armed with a pinch bar, removed a section of track, George H. Flinn drove a pick in the ground, Mr. Holland dug up a shovelful of dirt, and the breaking of ground was over.” Although it was a private affair, there seems to have been at least one reporter/photographer at the scene: a picture of the ceremonial event and another of a large group of attending engineers standing as if in a lineup appeared in the next week’s issue of Engineering News-Record. The ceremony was no doubt brief, and the general concern was less with capturing tools to silverplate than with getting on with the construction job. Holland had reasoned that once ground was broken, it would be more difficult to stop work. He had been increasingly concerned that the New Jersey commissioners would hold to their threat that work would not be permitted to begin until concessions were made regarding street improvements, not to mention the threat of a gala Fourth of July ground-breaking that not only would have delayed the start of work but might also have upped the stakes in the fight for concessions once plans for the gala were set.
Clandestine ground-breaking in New Jersey for the Canal Street Tunnel by (left to right): C. M. Holland, chief engineer, for whom the tunnel would be named posthumously; G. H. Flinn, of the contractor Booth & Flinn; and R. C. Falconer, chief engineer of the Erie Railroad, in whose yard the ceremony was taking place (photo credit 5.4)
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Even with the Canal Street tunnel under way, the relative merits of bridges and tunnels continued to be much discussed, but it was the low cost of a tunnel compared with grandiose bridge schemes like Lindenthal’s that began to tip the balance. Furthermore, it was argued, if several tunnels were built at various locations along the river, traffic between New York and New Jersey could be diffused. This addressed directly one of the continuing concerns over Lindenthal’s 57th Street bridge: the concentrated volume of traffic it would bring to already congested midtown streets. Private capital began to see the possibilities of the alternative, and the Interstate Vehicular Tunnel Company made known its plans for three new tubes under the Hudson, though one of the company’s incorporators, Darwin R. James, would not reveal the locations being considered, so as not to inflate real-estate prices. Even though the question of ventilation had yet to be proved on the full scale, James asserted that for the “purely commercial” project “the engineering problems had all been solved.”
In early March 1923, plans were announced for a tunnel to connect Manhattan in the vicinity of 125th Street to Bergen County across the river. The projected growth of vehicle traffic and subsequent development of New Jersey made the estimated cost of $75 million appear to be a sound investment. Before long, a Harlem and Bergen Tunnel organization was seeking incorporation for the purpose of “the construction of one or more tunnels for vehicular and pedestrian traffic between a point in Harlem, between West 120th and West 140th Streets, and a point in Bergen County, N.J.” At the time, another company was also seeking incorporation, in order to construct a tunnel near 42nd Street.
The possible proliferation of uncoordinated river crossings, combined with the problems of two independent commissions, was no doubt a factor in the growing talk about bringing all tunnels, including the one already begun, under the jurisdiction of the Port of New York Authority, which had been established in 1921 to develop and regulate movement about the port shared by the neighboring states. New York’s Governor Al Smith proposed early in 1923 that, with the authority to issue bonds, such a body could finance public works whose toll revenue not only would pay off the bonds but also would provide the funds necessary for ongoing maintenance and operation, without the need of expending tax revenues. In late May, Smith vetoed two tunnel bills before him and let it be known that he opposed private control of such facilities, thus helping to complete the groundwork for a new era in Hudson River crossings, whose need was growing.
In the meantime, Holland’s tunnel was progressing, but not without troubles for its engineer. Sandhogs, as the tunnel workers were known, went on strike for “more wages, fewer hours, and lower air pressure,” to reduce the risk of contracting the bends. Costs were also rising, in part because of increased prices of materials and labor, but also because of design changes such as those involving the approaches. Toward the end of 1923, when the tunnel was about 60 percent done, Holland had to answer criticism that the engineering budget was inflated, and had to overcome political interference even at the level of hiring a draftsman “who did not come from the Hudson County Democratic organization.” By early 1924, the final cost was estimated to be $42 million, with larger plazas and improved ventilation systems contributing to a more-than-tripling of the cost over the preliminary estimate. The efficacy of the ventilation system was an ever-present concern. The new twin Liberty Tunnels through Pittsburgh’s South Hills were opened prematurely in 1924, then had to be closed after only two hundred cars had passed through, because of dangerously high concentrations of carbon monoxide. Later that year, a trolley strike in Pittsburgh caused massive traffic jams in the tunnels, and the accumulated fumes caused scores of people to become ill in their cars. It would not happen under the Hudson, Holland assured New Yorkers and New Jerseyites, for his tunnel would have four times as many ventilation shafts, and traffic congestion would not be permitted to occur. In a long letter to the editor of The New York Times that read more like a scholarly article, Yandell Henderson, professor of applied physiology at Yale University, proposed obviating the fumes problem by fitting vehicles with vertical exhaust pipes that extended upward to a few inches above the tops of the cars and trucks.
Additional problems continued to arise. In early April, the tunnel sprang a leak and water rushed in, forcing thirty-five workers to flee for their lives. Shortly thereafter, there was another sandhog strike, with increasing numbers of men complaining of the bends. In September, there was growing concern for the mound that was being thrown up on the river bottom by the shield driving the tunnel through the silt. The three largest ocean liners of the day, the Berengaria, Leviathan, and Majestic, had to follow a revenue cutter through “the only spot in the Hudson River where the great liners could pass” without danger of grounding. Though the mound would be dredged away once construction was completed, it meanwhile presented a distinct danger to port traffic.
A milestone in the construction project was to occur in late October 1924, when the two tunnel shields boring the north tube were to cease working and the remaining thickness of silt was to be blasted out, thus completing the connection between New York and New Jersey. Though careful and continual surveying made it virtually impossible for the two tunnel halves to be out of alignment, it was reported that “some of the engineers engaged in the work lie awake nights just the same worrying about it.” Nevertheless, an elaborate ceremony was being planned; President Coolidge would press a button in his library in the White House connected via telegraph wires to the dynamite, thus setting off the blast at precise
ly nine o’clock on the evening of October 29. Newark radio station WOR was to broadcast the event live, its “impresario” being present “in the depths of the tunnel,” along with the governors, mayors, commissioners, and U.S. senators of the two states. As soon as the blast was set off, a band would play “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The blast occurred nine hours early, and it was not President Coolidge but George Flinn, head of the construction company, who pressed the button. No mistake was made; acting chief engineer Milton H. Freeman deliberately directed preparations for blasting away the final eight feet of silt. After the tunnel was holed through, the two ends were found to be well aligned, to within three-quarters of an inch of one another. However, the engineers and workmen present in the tunnel at the time took the breakthrough as part of an ordinary day’s work, in fact making every effort to avoid any appearance of ceremony The sudden change of plans took place because, two days before the historic event, chief engineer Clifford Holland had died.
It had been said of Holland that he “started working on tunnels the morning after he received his degree” from Harvard. For eighteen years, he had worked under the rivers defining Manhattan Island, and the physically and emotionally stressful conditions appear to have taken their toll on his health. Three weeks before his death, he suffered a nervous breakdown, which prompted the joint tunnel commission to pass a resolution commending him for “his continuous devotion, night and day, during the past five years,” to the Hudson River project, and to grant him a month’s vacation with full pay. He had gone to Battle Creek, Michigan, for a rest, and that is where he died, of heart disease. According to the newspaper report describing the unceremonious completion of the north tube, Holland “had expected that his heart would fail him some day and so had kept ready for a quick ending. From the time he was first chosen to plan and construct the tunnel until he left on his vacation recently he had kept the plans in such shape that the work would go on after his death.” It did, of course, and the tunnel, which would open in 1927, remains to this day an essential link in the traffic network of the New York metropolitan area.
News of Holland’s death brought immediate calls to name what had till now been called the Hudson River Vehicular Tunnel after its chief engineer. Within about two weeks, the tunnel joint commission did pass a resolution bestowing the name Holland Tunnel, and The New York Times hailed the action. Their editorial admitted that engineers had some reason to complain that politicians took more care to associate their own names rather than engineers’ with public works, but that this was less true than it had been. There was in the mid-1920s, according to the Times, “a general and cordial appreciation of the services rendered by engineers.” If they did not get the proper publicity, it was “largely the fault of their modesty. As a rule they are the poorest of self-advertisers, and are, or profess to be, content with professional recognition of their achievements.” Whether this is true generally, Holland was certainly thought to have been “the last to exploit his own merits,” and so it was fitting that his greatest achievement be recognized by being named after him. However, the Times also feared that, “as he shared his name with the nation that ruled New York in its early days, the title of the tunnel will be understood by many, in the years to come, as referring to the nation rather than to the man.” A device for preventing this misunderstanding remains elusive, however, and even today few realize the true origin of the tunnel’s name, which is emblazoned in letters several feet tall atop the tollbooths that stretch across the New Jersey entrance plaza.
In 1924, construction on the Holland Tunnel had continued under Milton Freeman, who had almost twenty years of experience in tunnel work. However, after less than four months as chief engineer, he too died, of pneumonia, to which his resistance had been lowered by “long-continued overwork.” Engineering News-Record reflected on the significance of it all: “Throughout time the building of great works for the use and convenience of man has claimed its victims. Not only gold and labor but also human life is wrought into what the builder creates.” In a letter to the editor of the magazine, Robert Ridgway, chief engineer for the New York City Board of Transportation, remembered Freeman as being Holland’s “able lieutenant, working modestly and quietly, studying under the direction of his chief every one of the many details that made up the work.” During crisis conditions, Freeman would spend countless hours on the job, “without going to the street for food,” sleeping in his field office. Ridgway speculated that Freeman’s modesty may have been carried too far, for few but his associates knew of his devotion and commitment to the projects on which he worked. “Mr. Holland used to say of him that he was an engineer who made the reputation of other engineers.” Holland, like all the best chief engineers, would have known that anything named after him was a memorial to the many, like Freeman, upon whom he so depended.
The worries of the Holland Tunnel engineers may or may not have been aggravated by the “nice controversy” that rearose early in 1924, when both Governor Smith of New York and Governor Silzer of New Jersey proposed that the recently formed Port of New York Authority take over the tunnel. Among the primary purposes of the Port Authority was to simplify and rationalize the transfer of great volumes of goods between the rail freight yards in New Jersey and the factories, warehouses, and wharves in Manhattan. The tunnel, originally conceived of as “merely an underwater street,” was certainly intended in part to carry trucks between New Jersey and New York, but in the years since its construction began, the development of the motor truck and private automobile had so changed the complexion of traffic on the roads around New York Harbor that the tunnel was likely to be overcrowded with automobile and truck traffic as soon as it was opened. To do its job better, the argument went, the Port Authority should control such an interstate traffic artery.
There was good reason to believe that other factors also motivated the proposal. Since the Authority had only a modest annual appropriation for administration, it had no money for capital projects. The tunnel, however, with the projected amount of vehicle tolls to be collected, promised to be an enormous source of revenue. If the Port Authority had control of the tunnel and its tolls, it would have the capital basis and continuing revenue for issuing bonds to finance other projects relating to traffic between New York and New Jersey. The Authority had been talking of building as many as five vehicular tunnels, and thus there was good reason to believe that it was indeed looking for ways to finance them. Even if trucking interests dreaded the prospect of the precedent of perpetual tolls for the use of a tunnel that had been intended to become free after about twenty years, there was growing public support for using public money to build bridges and tunnels whose toll revenue would in time repay whatever bonds were issued. In the 1924 election, for example, every county in New Jersey voted, by an overall margin of almost four to one, in favor of an $8-million bond referendum to continue support for building the suspension bridge between Camden and Philadelphia and the tunnel under the Hudson, both of which they expected would eventually be paid for by tolls.
What was curiously missing from the Port Authority’s public plans was the construction of a bridge across the Hudson River. Since before World War I tunnels had been argued to be much less expensive than bridges, and they avoided the complications of providing high clearance for ships or the necessity of condemning large amounts of land to accommodate long approaches. However, with the final cost of the Holland Tunnel coming in at about four times the original estimate, and the growing vehicular as opposed to rail traffic in the New York metropolitan area, tunnels could no longer be argued to be the obvious economic choice. Relatively small capacity tunnels at different locations still had the advantage of diffusing traffic rather than concentrating it the way a single large bridge would, but which form of traffic communication should be picked in a particular instance began to involve arguments that amounted to deciding between six double tubes of one and a dozen lanes of the other. Such choices had long been debated.
In October 1908, an article in The New York Times had looked ahead to the bridges and tunnels that could be expected to lead into and out of Manhattan fifty years in the future. With the Queensboro and Manhattan bridges across the East River then under construction, the article predicted that “the next of the great viaducts will probably be the New York and New Jersey Bridge across the Hudson River.” The midtown-Manhattan site of the “originally planned” bridge was reported to have been replaced by “a site further northward,” with the vicinity of 181st Street mentioned as one possible location. In a bird’s-eye view of Manhattan and its links to the west and east, only four Hudson River crossings were sketched in: the two pairs of McAdoo tunnels, the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels that would lead to Pennsylvania Station, then yet to be designed, and a suspension bridge way up north, near 179th Street.
An interstate bridge commission had been formed as early as 1906 to determine whether and where a bridge for pedestrians, private vehicles, and trolleys could be built across the Hudson. Commissioners from both sides of the river had been looking at sites up and down the waterway, and the vicinity of 110th and 112th streets had also appeared to be a good choice technically. However, that site “would seriously injure the property of Columbia University, St. Luke’s Hospital, and the other eleemosynary institutions situated in that neighborhood,” representing a total investment of some $30 million, according to Columbia’s president, Nicholas Murray Butler, who summed up by calling any decision to build a bridge there “little short of vandalism.” Whereas the New Jersey commissioners continued to remain favorable to a site near Columbia, the New York commissioners appear to have sympathized with President Butler’s concerns; they leaned toward a site at 179th Street, and that is essentially what was sketched in in the bird’s-eye view in The New York Times.