[caption id="attachment_177" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Atlantic and Court"]
[/caption]
We were told to meet at Court and Atlantic, where we would climb a ladder down a manhole.
We waited in groups in the middle of Atlantic until the BUG (Brooklyn Union Gas) guy summoned us forward. Note official stogie.
Daniella goes first.
Then me.
After crawling under a giant concrete encased gas pipe, and stepping through a 4 foot opening, you see the tunnel.
"a passage of acheron-like solemnity and darkness." Walt Whitman wrote about this tunnel in the Brooklyn Daily News in 1862. Unfortunately my camera cant really handle solemnity and darkness. Sorry.
[caption id="attachment_181" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Bob
Diamond Presides"]
[/caption](photo by Paul Younger)
Bob Diamond, the guy who rediscovered this tunnel in 1982, waits at the top of the entry stairs to warn of their uneveness. The tunnel is 30 feet tall and 20 feet wide. The walls are made with granite blocks from Manhattan, and the ceiling is hand laid bricks. The ceiling is perfect and looks scuplted. The tunnel is cold and damp, and the dirt floor is bumpy from where the railroad ties used to be. The walls are wet in some places, raising the ew factor a bit.
(photo by Paul Younger)
We walked east under Atlantic Avenue, where the steam engines used to plow through pedestrians, carriages and horses at 40 mph. It took 8 blocks for trains to reach a complete stop. The dismembering delays cost Vanderbilt a lot of money, and caused passengers to miss their ferry, which could only run at high tide. To avoid the manslaughter nuisance, Vanderbilt built this tunnel in 1844.
A perfectly elliptical sunlight hatch in the brick ceiling. Bob said the tunnel was built to connect New York passengers to Boston. After taking the ferry across New York Harbor, passengers took the train through the tunnel to the Long Island Sound Ferry, which took them to Connecticut, where they took the train to Boston. The trip took about 8 hours, a big improvement over the 2 day trip by steamboat.
The only way I can describe Bob Diamond is that he is truly in his element in this tunnel. His knowledge comes at you like one of those steam trains.
In 1861, the city paid the Litchfield Company to fill in the tunnel. This notoriously corrupt company (which sold land it didnt own to midwestern farmers) sealed off the entrances and pocketed what would have been spent to fill it in. And there it sat, officially not existing despite rumors of a mafia distillery, German nerve gas labs, and 5 foot rats, until Bob came along with an old map and a hunch about a weird manhole.
Bob used this chain ladder to reach the bottom of the tunnel after convincing Brooklyn Union Gas to let him open the abandoned manhole in 1982. He found neither rats nor Germans, but evidence of a distillery.
The tunnel is also rumored to be haunted. When the overseer of the tunnel building project declared that the workers (all Irish) must work for free on Sundays, he was shot dead on the spot and buried behind the wall.
The evil overseer? No, thats just Paul Younger, who remembered to bring a headlight.
After 2 1/2 hours under Atlantic Avenue, (did I mention how much Bob likes a captive audience?) I was never so happy to be standing in the middle of traffic in Atlantic Avenue. But I'll let Walt Whitman express that below.
(photo by Paul Younger)
"dark as the grave, cold, damp and silent. How beautiful look earth and heaven again, as we emerge from the gloom! It might not be unprofitable now and then to send us mortals, the dissatisfied ones at least- and thats a large proportion- into some tunnel of several days journey, we'd perhaps grumble less afterward at God's handiwork."
-Walt Whitman, part of "Brooklyniana," an essay series published in the Brooklyn Daily News 1861-1862.
[/caption]We were told to meet at Court and Atlantic, where we would climb a ladder down a manhole.
We waited in groups in the middle of Atlantic until the BUG (Brooklyn Union Gas) guy summoned us forward. Note official stogie.
Daniella goes first. Then me.After crawling under a giant concrete encased gas pipe, and stepping through a 4 foot opening, you see the tunnel.
"a passage of acheron-like solemnity and darkness." Walt Whitman wrote about this tunnel in the Brooklyn Daily News in 1862. Unfortunately my camera cant really handle solemnity and darkness. Sorry.
[caption id="attachment_181" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Bob
Diamond Presides"][/caption](photo by Paul Younger)Bob Diamond, the guy who rediscovered this tunnel in 1982, waits at the top of the entry stairs to warn of their uneveness. The tunnel is 30 feet tall and 20 feet wide. The walls are made with granite blocks from Manhattan, and the ceiling is hand laid bricks. The ceiling is perfect and looks scuplted. The tunnel is cold and damp, and the dirt floor is bumpy from where the railroad ties used to be. The walls are wet in some places, raising the ew factor a bit.
(photo by Paul Younger)
We walked east under Atlantic Avenue, where the steam engines used to plow through pedestrians, carriages and horses at 40 mph. It took 8 blocks for trains to reach a complete stop. The dismembering delays cost Vanderbilt a lot of money, and caused passengers to miss their ferry, which could only run at high tide. To avoid the manslaughter nuisance, Vanderbilt built this tunnel in 1844.
A perfectly elliptical sunlight hatch in the brick ceiling. Bob said the tunnel was built to connect New York passengers to Boston. After taking the ferry across New York Harbor, passengers took the train through the tunnel to the Long Island Sound Ferry, which took them to Connecticut, where they took the train to Boston. The trip took about 8 hours, a big improvement over the 2 day trip by steamboat.
The only way I can describe Bob Diamond is that he is truly in his element in this tunnel. His knowledge comes at you like one of those steam trains.
In 1861, the city paid the Litchfield Company to fill in the tunnel. This notoriously corrupt company (which sold land it didnt own to midwestern farmers) sealed off the entrances and pocketed what would have been spent to fill it in. And there it sat, officially not existing despite rumors of a mafia distillery, German nerve gas labs, and 5 foot rats, until Bob came along with an old map and a hunch about a weird manhole.
Bob used this chain ladder to reach the bottom of the tunnel after convincing Brooklyn Union Gas to let him open the abandoned manhole in 1982. He found neither rats nor Germans, but evidence of a distillery.
The tunnel is also rumored to be haunted. When the overseer of the tunnel building project declared that the workers (all Irish) must work for free on Sundays, he was shot dead on the spot and buried behind the wall.
The evil overseer? No, thats just Paul Younger, who remembered to bring a headlight.
After 2 1/2 hours under Atlantic Avenue, (did I mention how much Bob likes a captive audience?) I was never so happy to be standing in the middle of traffic in Atlantic Avenue. But I'll let Walt Whitman express that below.
(photo by Paul Younger)"dark as the grave, cold, damp and silent. How beautiful look earth and heaven again, as we emerge from the gloom! It might not be unprofitable now and then to send us mortals, the dissatisfied ones at least- and thats a large proportion- into some tunnel of several days journey, we'd perhaps grumble less afterward at God's handiwork."
-Walt Whitman, part of "Brooklyniana," an essay series published in the Brooklyn Daily News 1861-1862.