I have a tangential relationship with New York City’s tunnels. I have the most experience with the Brooklyn-Battery (or Hugh Carey Tunnel, as the Democratic Party-dominated state likes renaming bridges and tunnels for deceased Democratic politicians: the public ignores these names, and they’d ignore them if the dominant party was Republican). For a year or two, I was in the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel most days, as I worked in a type shop on W. 29th St. off 6th Ave. and since the express bus from Bay Ridge went straight up 6th Ave., I’d use it even though it cost $4 even when subway fares cost just $1. I’d sometimes catch it on the way home, too.
As for NYC’s other three major tunnels, I haven’t been in the Lincoln Tunnel, connecting the West Side with Weehawken, NJ since bussing it down the New Jersey Turnpike to Atlantic City in the 1990s to audition for Jeopardy! I’ve been to three such live auditions, two in Atlantic City and one in Boston. I also took the Lincoln Tunnel to Atlantic City trips and Palisades Park with the folks in the 1960s. As for the older Holland Tunnel, connecting Tribeca with Jersey City, I don’t recall the last time I was in it. The one time I was ever in the Queens Midtown Tunnel was back in 2015.
Here are some unexpected tunnels, underpasses and open cuts that NYC streets are occasionally forced into. They were generally not depicted on printed NYC maps from Hagstrom or Geographia, but they’re finally shown in detail on Open Street Map, Google Maps or Apple Maps which allow one to zoom in for better detail. They’re part of NYC’s varied infrastructure.
Above: The United Nations complex opened in 1950 on a former slaughterhouse and warehouse district along 1st Ave. between E. 41st and 47th Sts. and immediately began attracting additional idling traffic from tour buses and other vehicles. So that “regular” traffic could proceed up 1st Ave.—northbound exclusively, as it opened in 1953, two years after 1st Ave. was made one-way northbound. The interior is no-frills, as with most tunnels.
The FDR Drive is shadowed between E. 63rd and 71st Sts. by Rockefeller University and NY Presbyterian Hospital, some of whose buildings are platformed over the roadway. Toward the south end, there are some unusual lampposts that bring back the thin mast brackets seen on lampposts installed in the 1950s.
The FDR Drive enters another lengthy cut beneath Carl Schurz Park and Gracie Mansion between E. 83rd and 90th Sts. that become a “true” tunnel at its north end. Unusually, it has a pair of signs in metal letters on each side at the north tunnel mouth, showing Fiorello LaGuardia and the other engineers that built the tunnel. These signs aren’t meant to be read by passing motorists but by whoever is using park paths above them. They haven’t been maintained and the letters are dropping off.
The roadway connecting The East River Drive (street signs only identify it as “FDR Drive” north of Montgomery St.) and West St. (formerly the elevated West Side Highway/Miller Highway) is known as the “Battery Park Underpass” even though it’s a true tunnel, running under the park’s west side. It was built between 1949 and 1951 just after the elevated FDR Drive opened along the East River. Various proposals to extend it north, replacing the viaduct, have petered out over the years.
Motorists know all about the Park Avenue Tunnel, which runs beneath the avenue between 33rd and 40th Sts., but few pedestrians ever see it. It was built in 1834 as an open cut for the New York & Harlem Railroad (NY&H) which ran both steam engines and horsecars, and the cut was bridged over in 1850, creating the tunnel—by far the oldest shown on this page. The tunnel has carried trolley tracks, two-way traffic, and now northbound auto traffic.
The oldest tunnel of any kind in Manhattan is the Mount Prospect Tunnel opened in 1837. It now forms the center two tracks of Metro North from 92nd St. to 94th St., under Park Ave. The tunnel north and south of it, and the one-track tunnels on each side of it, were added in 1873-1875, but the Mount Prospect Tunnel was left in place.
There are a number of cross streets that underjump the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, for traffic that wants to cross it without waiting at red signals. My suspicion is that these underjumps were originally built to accommodate trolley tracks. Some admit pedestrians on sidewalks, some don’t. Eleven lanes wide from 161st St. north to Mosholu Parkway, the Grand Boulevard and Concourse (shortened to Grand Concourse for the benefit of sign makers and cabbies) was first conceived by engineer Louis Risse in 1870 and was built, from 161st St. north, in 1909. The Grand Concourse became the Bronx’s showpiece as the Bronx Borough Hall, Yankee Stadium, and elegant apartment buildings were constructed along or close to its length.
Unless you’re a motorist using the GC frequently you’re probably unaware that East Fordham Rd. is bridged over it in an arch structure probably going back to the GC’s origins in 1909. The central four lanes bypass the busy intersection completely. In other intersections, lanes of Kingsbridge Rd. and E. 204th, among others, pass under the Concourse, but this is the only case in which a road is bridged over it.
At left, we see the former Alexander’s Department Store, the flagship in a chain of stores founded by George Farkas in 1928 and named for his deceased father. The Fordham Rd. store opened in 1933 and closed in 1992. The building’s home to electronics chain P.C. Richard and clothing retailer Marshall’s.
In the 1930s, the middle lanes of Queens Boulevard were depressed in an open cut to make it easier for motorists to avoid both busy Woodhaven Boulevard and Nassau Boulevard, the road that eventually became the Long Island (Horace Harding) Expressway. Unlike other open cuts on this page, more esthetic care was taken to make the side walls attractive.
As the Long Island Rail Road enters the Jamaica station on Sutphin Boulevard, its main hub, the road expands into dozens of trackways accommodating the railroad’s many eastern branches. While most roads are divided by this right-of-way, some north-south streets are permitted to pass, such as the Van Wyck Expressway, Sutphin Boulevard, Guy Brewer Boulevard, and other main roads.
Some of the side streets, too, were given passageways under the LIRR and in most cases, it’s a familiar steel and iron bridge. However there are other cases where a concrete arch (probably lined with iron) carries the RR over the road with very low clearance; the railroad is on an embankment at these points. Such “tunnels” can be found at 130th St., 143rd St., 158th St. and 183rd St., and they’re dark roads.
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)