“From its inception, the Queens Midtown Tunnel was a key link in the metropolitan region’s transportation network, providing a vital conduit for businesses, daily commuters and families exploring the cultural riches that exist from Manhattan to Queens and Long Island," said MTA Bridges and Tunnels President Jim Ferrara.
The MTA placed a collection of historic photographs and accompanying text in lobby of its lower Manhattan offices at 2 Broadway until the end of November. It was also among one of the most photographed projects. Commercial photographers took more than 4.600 photographs documenting each aspect of its progress. The display shows the evolution from construction of the tunnel thru its completion and opening from the MTA Bridges and Tunnels Special Archive.
History of the tube
Inspired by the new Holland Tunnel on Manhattan’s west side, civic and business groups began lobbying in the early 1920s for an East River tunnel to help handle a steady increase in traffic at its already clogged East River bridges. The city’s Board of Estimate approved $2 million to design and construct an East River tunnel but plans were put on hold when the stock market crash occurred in 1929.
In order to begin the construction process, the Public Works Administration promised $58 million loans in 1935 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. Then Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia created the Queens Midtown Tunnel Authority, telling the new agency’s three-members, “You are starting from scratch with no appropriation and nothing but an idea and a law.”
The Oct.2, 1936 ground-breaking was marked with the push of a ceremonial button by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Over the next three years, the tunnel’s two tubes were excavated using the typical technology of the day - dynamite, drills and four circular 31’ wide cutting shields. The shield were lowered into shafts at each end of the tunnel and hydraulically shoved through the riverbed until they met in the middle. Sandhogs behind the shields assembled the 32-inch wide cast iron rings that still line the tunnels. As each ring was installed, 28 jacks behind the shield shoved new rings into place using 5,000 pounds of pressure per square inch. The work was particularly difficult on the Manhattan side where the rock was made of schist, limestone, gneiss and dolomite. All the rubble was removed using the Queens and Manhattan construction shafts. Work proceeded at a rate of about 18 feet per week for each shield. All totaled it took 54 million hours of labor to finish the QMT.
To blast the last six feet of rock between the Manhattan and Queens shields in both tubes, Mayor LaGuardia ignited the last dynamite charge on November 8, 1939. Fifty-three weeks later, opening ceremonies were held at the Manhattan toll plaza, attended by President Roosevelt, who was the first person to drive through the new tunnel. Other attendees included Mayor LaGuardia, Sen. Robert Wagner, and the tunnel’s Chief Engineer Ole Singstad, a well-known tunnel builder who finished building the Holland Tunnel after the death of its original engineer. In its first full year of operation, 4.4 million vehicles used the tunnel, paying 25 cents to cross it.
The tunnel today
Seventy-years later, the tunnel appears much the same as it did when it opened in 1940, except the original brick roadway, which was replaced with asphalt in 1995, and the addition of E-ZPass technology. The last major rehabilitation project, a $126 million project completed in 2001, replaced original 1930s materials and resulted in brighter lighting, new ceilings, new tiles along the walls and an entirely new traffic control system, including electronic message signs, and traffic control lights and signals. In 2009, 27.7 million traversed it.
SIDEBAR
Queens Midtown Tunnel By the Numbers (courtesy MTA Bridges and Tunnels)
•The south tube to Queens is 6,272 feet while the north tube to Manhattan is 6,414 feet
•There are a total of 178 employees at the Queens Midtown Tunnel. This figure includes 112 Bridge and Tunnel Officers, 18 Sergeants and Lieutenants, 37 Maintenance workers, 4 Engineers, 6 Managers and 1 administrative worker.
•The tunnel’s two ventilation buildings bring 3 million cubic feet of fresh air into the tunnels each minute, and provide a complete air change every 90 seconds.
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