Tunnel Construction

The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel is eerily quiet as construction remains halted because supplies and manpower have been diverted to America’s war effort overseas. On this day, September 20, 1944, the city’s Tunnel Authority offered reporters and photographers a first-hand look inside one of the idle twin tubes.

The tunnel, which connects the Red Hook in Brooklyn to Battery Park in Manhattan, was started in 1940. It had to wait out World War II, unfinished, as supplies and manpower dwindled and construction was stopped. After D-Day in 1944, with the allies winning and Germany’s surrender just a matter of time, New York sought permission from the government to buy 790 tons of bolts, washers and nuts to finish the 9,117-foot-long tunnel. The government, which controlled such things during the war, granted the request; work resumed in 1945.

The tunnel, the longest continuous underwater vehicular tunnel in North America, opened May 25, 1950.