Chapter 20. The Hudson and Manhattan Tunnels

Previous

Index

Fifty Years of Rapid Transit · James Blaine Walker

Chapter XX

The Hudson and Manhattan Tunnels Under the Hudson River.

PLANS for bridging over or tunneling under the Hudson River were formed about the middle of the Nineteenth Century, but it was not until 1873 that they took definite shape. In that year the Hudson River Tunnel Company was incorporated to build a tunnel under the Hudson to connect New York City with the railroads terminating at Jersey City, New Jersey. Its president was De Witt C. Haskin, a man of bold and determined character whose project for boring a highway under the mighty river was far ahead of his times. He failed, but his idea lived and was carried out a third of a century later by men who then could command the skill and experience lacking in Haskin's day.

It was in November, 1874, that Haskin's company began work. His plan contemplated a tunnel 26 feet wide by 24 feet high to accommodate two tracks. The tunnel was to have an iron shell, with a lining of brick masonry three feet thick. The first work was to sink a shaft on the New Jersey side about 100 feet from the river at the foot of Fifteenth street, Jersey City. This shaft had been sunk to a depth of twenty feet, when the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company started injunction proceedings. This and other litigation stopped the work for five years. It was resumed in 1879, when the shaft was completed to a depth of 60 feet and from the bottom a heading for the tunnel was started. Compressed air was used to support the roof and keep out the water, but without the shield now so universally used.

The engineers in charge of the work were Spielman and Brush, and they changed the plans to provide for two tunnels instead of one, each to be of elliptical shape and to carry one track, and to be 18 feet high and 16 feet wide. In July, 1880, the North tunnel had been driven 280 feet and the South tunnel 15 feet, when a bad "blowout" of air occurred, letting the river water into the works and drowning about twenty men. It took six months to sink a pneumatic caisson alongside and regain entry into the tunnel. Before the accident the tunnel had been allowed to get both out of grade and out of alignment, and some of the brick lining had cracked.

In May, 1881, General William Sooy Smith took charge as chief engineer, but remained only one year. During that time work was resumed and a caisson was sunk on the New York side at the foot of Morton street. The work continued with varying fortune until November, 1882, when it was stopped for lack of funds. At that time the North tunnel from New Jersey had been driven 1,542 feet, the South tunnel 570 feet and the North tunnel from New York 74 feet. In December of that year Trenor W. Park, who had succeeded Haskin as president of the company, died at sea and was succeeded by C. G. Francklyn.

Additional funds were obtained and the work was resumed in April, 1883, at the New York end, but in August the money gave out and operations again were suspended. The suspension lasted until April, 1887, when work was resumed on the New Jersey side, but was again suspended in September, when the Jersey North tunnel was out 1,840 feet from the shaft.

In 1889 bonds were floated in England and work was once more resumed, this time with S. Pearson and Sons, of London, as contractors, and William R. Hutton as engineer. By the end of the year the North tunnel from Jersey City had been driven 2,000 feet from the shaft, although a bad "blow-out" marked the progress of the work. At this point the contractors introduced the use of the tunnel shield, which was installed in 1890, and thereafter the work was pursued by this method. A year later the North tunnel reached a point 3,700 feet out, which was about 700 feet across the New York State line. In August, 1891, however, another financial crisis arose, following the great Baring failure, and the company found it impossible to procure funds. Accordingly work was again suspended, with the North tunnel bored to a point 3,900 feet out. In 1892 the contractors, S. Pearson and Sons, filed a lien for $20,000 on the tunnel. The British company failed to advance the needed money and the work was practically abandoned for ten years.

In the meantime, namely in 1899, the tunnel was sold under foreclosure and purchased by Stetson, Jennings and Russell, a New York law firm, acting for the bondholders. In 1902 the project was revived by the New York and Jersey Railroad company, organized by William G. McAdoo, a New York lawyer, who subsequently became Secretary of the Treasury in President Wilson's cabinet. This company acquired the old company's rights and resumed work in 1902, with Charles M. Jacobs as chief engineer. It applied at once to the Board of Rapid Transit Railroad Commissioners for a perpetual franchise under the New York rapid transit act for tunnel rights from Morton street, Manhattan, to the New Jersey State boundary under the Hudson River, there to connect with the partially built tunnel from Jersey City. The franchise was granted by the Board on July 10, 1902, but was not approved by the Board of Aldermen and the Mayor until the following December.

As the tunnel was to run southward on the New Jersey side to the Pennsylvania Railroad terminal in Jersey City, it was decided to get a franchise for an additional tunnel under the river from that point to lower Manhattan. For this purpose a new company, known as the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad company, was organized in 1903. The new company applied to the Board for another perpetual franchise for two more tubes, to run from a point between Liberty and Fulton streets, Manhattan, under the Hudson River to the State line, there to connect with similar tubes to be built out from Jersey City. This was granted by the Board on November 24 and approved by the Aldermen and the Mayor late in December, 1903.

Meanwhile the work was proceeding rapidly under the management of Mr. Jacobs. In March, 1904, the North tunnel was "holed through" and in September, 1905, the South tunnel headings were joined. In the same month work was begun on the downtown tunnel.

On March 2, 1904, the New York and Jersey Railroad Company made further application to the Board for an extension of its tunnel route from the Manhattan terminus at Greenwich street and West Tenth street to Sixth Avenue and thence northward under Sixth Avenue to Thirty-third street, and for a perpetual franchise therefor. This was denied by the Board, which was unwilling to grant perpetual rights in such a case, involving one of the principal north and south avenues of New York City. On May 5, 1904, the company made application for a "limited term" franchise for the Sixth Avenue line, but on May 24 withdrew it and substituted one for an extension from Christopher and Greenwich streets easterly under Christopher and Ninth streets to Third avenue. Property owners in Sixth avenue objected to the abandonment of the proposed extension under that thoroughfare to Thirty-third street, and the Board finally agreed to offer the company a franchise for it subject to recapture by the City in twenty-five years, and a franchise in perpetuity for the Ninth street extension as far as Fourth avenue. The company was willing and accordingly the Board granted the franchise for both extensions on these conditions on December 22, 1904.

The franchise provided for the extension of the two-track subway from the previous terminal at Greenwich, West Tenth and Christopher streets easterly under Christopher street to Sixth Avenue, whence two tracks should proceed northward under Sixth avenue to Thirty-third street and two tracks eastwardly under Ninth street to Fourth avenue. Stations were located in Christopher street between Greenwich and Hudson streets; Christopher street and Sixth avenue; in Sixth avenue at Fourteenth, Eighteenth, Twenty-third, Twenty-eighth and Thirty-third streets.

As rental it was provided that the company should pay to the City annually fifty cents per foot for each linear foot of single track railroad for ten years after beginning operation and one dollar per foot thereafter until the rental under the original franchise of 1902 should become subject to readjustment. A further payment of $9,000 per annum was provided for, such amount being equivalent to three per cent. of $300,000, the estimated annual gross earnings of the extensions. This payment was to be made for ten years, after which the amount of it was to be five per cent. of the gross earnings of the extensions. All payments were to be readjusted at the end of each twenty-five years.

This certificate was approved by the Board of Aldermen in February, 1905, with a slight modification allowing the granting of permits for street openings by the City officials. Having failed to get the consents of property owners, the company applied to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, which confirmed the favorable report of its commissioners on June 14, 1905. On the following day the company began construction of the Sixth Avenue extension.

The Hudson and Manhattan Railroad company, which held the franchise for the down-town tunnels of the line, also failed in obtaining property owners' consents and applied to the court. Commissioners were appointed and reported favorably, and the Appellate Division confirmed their report on June 14, 1905. Construction work on this line began September 5, 1905.

On December 1, 1906, the various companies of this system, including the New Jersey and New York corporations, were consolidated with the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company, which thenceforward conducted the management and operation of the new lines. Work was pushed forward without undue delay and operation of the "Hudson Tubes", as the line came to be called, was begun on February 25, 1908, more than thirty-three years after the work had been started by Haskin. The motive power is electricity generated in a plant in Jersey City and supplied by the third rail method.

At the Manhattan terminal of the downtown tubes the Hudson Terminal building was erected, with the station in the basement. This building, a 22 story "skyscraper", was erected by the Hudson Companies, a separate corporation formed in 1905 to handle the construction and real estate operations for the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad company. The financing was done by the banking firm of Harvey Fisk and Sons, Messrs. Pliny Fisk and William M. Barnum of that house having been closely connected with the enterprise. The total cost of the system and its equipment was about $70,000,000. Mr. McAdoo remained president of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad company until he went into the cabinet in 1913, when he was succeeded by Wilbur C. Fisk. Mr. Jacobs remained chief engineer to the end and was assisted by J. Vipond Davies as deputy chief engineer.

In 1909 the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad company applied to and received from the Public Service Commission for the First District a franchise for an extension of the tunnel from its present terminus at Sixth Avenue and Thirty-third street northward under Sixth Avenue and curving under Bryant Park to Forty-second street and the Grand Central station of the New York Central system. Owing to unfavorable financial conditions this extension has not yet been built.

The system as it operates today is a great addition to the transportation facilities of New York City. It carries about 70,000,000 passengers a year and the traffic is steadily growing. Many of these are commuters who live in New Jersey and do business in New York, formerly dependent on the ferry boats. In 1912 the company connected its lines with the Pennsylvania Railroad and now operates through trains from New York City to Manhattan Transfer and Newark. Incoming passengers on the Pennsylvania may change to Hudson and Manhattan trains at the Transfer and continue their journey through the tubes to downtown Manhattan without extra charge. On the Jersey side the tubes connect directly with the Erie and Lackawanna railroad terminals.

All steel equipment is used in the tunnels, the cars having center side doors and steel uprights as well as straps for standing passengers. The closing of the last door gives the electric signal to the motorman to start the train.

On February 25, 1915, the road had been in operation seven years. In that time it had carried 329,357,277 passengers without the loss of one life. Operated to its full capacity, it is estimated that it can carry 220,000,000 passengers a year, so that the present traffic is about one-third of the maximum.

The tunnels lie at an average depth below the bed of the Hudson River of 25 feet, although the deepest point in them is 101 feet below the surface of the water. The total weight of the iron rings used in their construction is 111,000 tons, and 925,000 barrels of cement were used in the concrete work.

The company is now operating about eight miles of road, of which a little more than three miles lie in New York and a little less than five in New Jersey. The total length of single track is more than eighteen miles. It has 226 steel passenger cars each forty-eight feet long and capable of seating forty-four persons. The capital stock is about $45,000,000 and the outstanding bond issues aggregate about $76,000,000.

The Hudson Terminal buildings are among the mammoth office buildings of the world. They have twenty-two floors above and four floors below the street level. They contain 4,500 rooms and 877,900 square feet of rentable area. The gross revenues from the buildings in 1914, including rentals, were $1,723,671.73.

Afterword

There is more than has been told in the story of New York's rapid transit undertakings, but to present it all the limits of a single volume would be exceeded. For instance, the evolution of the rapid transit car, from the flimsy wooden boxes used on the first elevated railroads to the ponderous and expensive all-steel, electric cars operated in the subways of today, is in itself an interesting story of the scientific and mechanical progress of the last half century. The adaptation of electricity to traction purposes, too, and the recounting of the many and rapid advances in this branch of electrical engineering would in itself provide material for a volume. But these and other phases of rapid transit development were purposely omitted in order to present in sufficient fullness the narrative of invention, legislation, construction, negotiation, private ownership and public ownership during Fifty Years of Rapid Transit, set forth in the preceding pages.

Previous

Index