THE HOLLAND TUNNEL CENTENNIAL YEAR

In many ways our region is blessed with a transportation infrastructure built by our forefathers:  our railroads, the Merritt Parkway and, in the case of New York City,  America’s first underwater vehicular tunnel, named after the man who died building it.

Happy birthday to NYC’s Holland Tunnel, now into its 100^th year of operations, carrying cars and trucks between lower Manhattan and New Jersey.  Before the tunnel 19,600 vehicles each day had to cross by ferry.

But in the winter of 1917, the Hudson River iced up and the overloaded boats struggled.  That’s when plans to build a vehicular crossing, discussed since 1906, finally got going.

But this was not to be the first trans-Hudson underwater crossing.  What we know today as the PATH (Port Authority Trans Hudson) train tunnel opened in 1908 and the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels in 1910.

But should NYC’s first vehicular crossing of the Hudson be a bridge or a tunnel?

In 1908 a commission suggested a bridge crossing starting at 57^th, 110^th or 179^th Street in Manhattan.  Then the War Department jumped in saying any such crossing would have to offer ships a 200-foot clearance, so a bridge (estimated in 1913 to cost $42 million, $1.4 billion in today’s inflated dollars) would instead become a tunnel as it could be built for $11 million ($372 million today).  So a tunnel it was.

But the Federal government refused funding (sound familiar?) so New York and New Jersey would have to raise the money themselves, which they did.

Engineers knew the tunnel was possible:  the railroads had proven that.  But those operated with electric trains.  A vehicular tunnel had a different challenge… exhaust fumes.  Without extensive ventilation drivers could be asphyxiated.  And that’s kind of bad for business.  So four huge ventilation towers would be built, their 84 fans changing the air in the tunnel every 90 seconds. 

Ventilation Fan Tower

Construction was to be led by engineer Clifford Holland, for whom the tunnel would be posthumously named.  Holland had already built several subway tunnels under the East River.  Sadly, Holland was never to see this plan to fruition, dying of a heart attack at age 41, reportedly due to the stress of this project.

In 1927 the 1.6 mile tunnel was officially opened with the tap of a telegraph key by President Calvin Coolidge (sitting on his yacht).  In the first day 20,000 people walked through the tunnel.  From the beginning, horses were banned from the twin tubes.  Judging by today’s rush hour traffic, horses might be faster.

When cars were allowed to cross the next day the toll was fifty cents. Today a crossing costs as much as $23 for the roundtrip.  Adjusting for inflation today’s toll is about the same as in 1927.  The traffic is not.

These days some 30 million vehicles drive the tubes, 97% of them cars (according to 2025 numbers), roughly twice the capacity first estimated by engineers in 1927.  That compares to 100 million crossings each year on the George Washington Bridge and almost 36 million traversing the Lincoln Tunnel.

Maintaining a structure this old isn’t easy.  In 1955 the original road surface of Belgian blocks and concrete was replaced with asphalt.  Repairs after super-storm Sandy flooded the tubes in 2012 cost $364 million. Today the tunnel’s six million white and colored ceiling and wall tiles are scrubbed regularly by overnight crews.  Without that effort the Port Authority says the tiles would blacken within a week.

Had he lived, Clifford Holland would have been proud of what he built and prouder still to know that it’s still meeting its mission, now into its 100th year.