Jersey City History
The Tubes: Rails Under the Hudson
1874 to the present-day PATH
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The Hoboken Historical Museum, in cooperation with the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy, presents "The Tubes: Rails Under the Hudson, 1874 to the Present-day PATH," an exhibit exploring the history of the rapid-transit tunnels under the Hudson River—from conception to contemporary use.
The exhibit was assisted by a grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission, a division of Cultural Affairs in the Department of State. Slide lectures were made possible by a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support was provided by Alpine Custom Floors and Alpine Restoration, Sign Graphics, Metro Fire & Communication, South Shore Contracting, and John Wiley & Sons.
 Photo courtesy of Ken Clare |
Most contemporary riders of the PATH rapid transit system are likely unaware that the sub-aqueous tunnels they pass through every day were first conceived in the 1870s—an engineering marvel that required new technology and untold human toil to achieve.
With this brochure, the Hoboken Historical Museum, the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy, and guest curator Terry Kennedy—organizers of a complementary exhibit—outline the story of the Hudson "Tubes": the political and personal forces that brought about the tunnels ' development, engineering advances and the army of "sandhog" that made their construction possible, and some of the ways in which the Tubes changed the lives of residents on both sides of the Hudson River.
Sandhogs & The Enginieering Marvel
 Photo courtesy of Ken Clare |
The building of a tunnel beneath the Hudson River began without fanfare on November 17, 1874, when a group of laborers, following the direction of former Union Army colonel and railroading tycoon DeWitt Clinton Haskin, began digging a circular excavation at the foot of 15th Street in Jersey City. A year before, Haskin had obtained a patent—and even more important, ten million dollars in financing for his Hudson Tunnel Railroad Company—for an underwater tunnel, originally designed for steam trains, using a compressed-air-and-caisson system he had seen used for pier-building in Missouri. This project would be the first to use air pressure in tunnel construction; the tubes would lie from 60 to 90 feet below the surface of the river.
The venture was both novel and risky: workers entered the tunnel from a caisson (a kind of inverted box) through an air lock, waited for the atmosphere to be artificially pressurized, then opened the tunnel door for digging. The dreaded "bends" afflicted some of the "sandhog" who worked within the pressure lock. Silt was dug in stages with shovel and pick; 14" boilerplate was inserted; and when a shell had been completed, bricklayers lay a two-foot-thick brick lining. Removed silt was mixed with water to be carried by air pressure through a pipe.
| Photo courtesy of Ken Clare |
Haskin's sandhogs did not get far. Litigation by the Lackawanna Railroad, which owned adjoining property, stalled the project for the next five years. When tunneling resumed, Haskin's company met with financial and technical failure—and human tragedy. Although the Colonel's crews had been successful in building 1, 200 feet of brick-lined tunnel working day and night in the artificially pressured atmosphere, the technique ultimately failed when applied to digging through soft silt. On July 21, 1880, a blowout (escaping air) claimed 20 lives—eighteen men from Jersey City and two from Hoboken.
The death toll would have been far higher if not for the heroism of assistant supervisor Peter Woodland. Working 60 feet below the surface of the riverbed, he heard what New York Sun reporters called "the shriek of escaping air, "and shouted for fellow laborers to "make for the lock!" Eight men reached the air chamber and safety. Woodland then closed the door. The saved men could only watch at the bulls-eye opening as water and silt rushed in to drown Woodland, who stayed behind and died with the other trapped men.
Woodland 's heroism and the sacrifices and endurance of other sandhogs were recognized in frontpage news stories of the period. The laborers have sadly receded from public memory, but the results of their labor remain: contemporary tube travelers can see still see, in the uptown line's westbound tunnel, near the New Jersey shoreline, the seams of the original brickwork prepared by the earliest builders of the Tubes.
MCADOO'S TUNNELS
One day, William Gibbs McAdoo, being called to Hoboken on business, was much vexed by the delays occasioned by a river full of craft of every conceivable description trying to feel their way through an almost impenetrable sea of fog. Thus delayed, his thoughts were turned to the necessity for a rapid method for transacting business across the Hudson.
- Hudson & Manhattan Railroad Company promotional material, ca. 1908
 Photo courtesy of Ken Clare |
Changes were made in construction methods following the blowout of 1880, including the replacement of brick linings with cast iron rings, and, in 1889, the invaluable introduction of a hydraulic tunnel shield used by a British engineering firm in building the London Underground. But financing problems continued unabated.
Enter Georgia-born lawyer William Gibbs McAdoo with new technologies, new financing schemes, and new, expanded plans for the tunnels -now designed for electric-powered trains. (Had Haskin succeeded with his steam train plans, the resulting fumes within the tunnels would most certainly have asphyxiated crews and passengers.) In 1902 McAdoo gained control of the tunnels from the bond-holders of the prior company, then organized the New York and Jersey Railroad, which later became the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company. In addition to twin tubes connecting midtown Manhattan and Hoboken, H&M planned and built a set from lower Manhattan to the Pennsylvania Railroad's Exchange Place terminal, Jersey City, and surveyed and partially built a pair from lower Man-