In that capacity, he was extremely influential in the growing debates over the nature of transportation in the New York area. The governor of New Jersey asked Goethals to lay out a new highway system for that state, and he was involved with questions of moving military goods in and through the New York and New Jersey area during World War I. Thus he was an almost unassailable authority on how to forestall a future coal famine, which in 1918 “was due almost entirely to the city’s inability because of the ice-choked river to transport thousands of tons of coal that were literally in sight on the other side of the river, and yet as unattainable as if they were still in the mines.”
Goethals estimated that the 1913 vehicular-tunnel proposal of the firm of Jacobs & Davies, with some of his own modifications, could be built in three years and could be paid for with tolls that were less than the ferries charged. Furthermore, if it was lined with concrete blocks instead of iron, the tunnel construction could proceed without interfering with the war effort. The joint commission, which had originally been charged with considering an interstate bridge at either 59th, 110th, or 179th Street, was thus now leaning toward a tunnel entering Manhattan at Canal Street, where the terrain was favorable. Goethals had convinced them, in the midst of the coal famine, that such a solution was the quickest and cheapest one and, by replacing the need for ferry slips, it would free up valuable waterfront space for commerce. Furthermore, since war conditions were making it imperative that vast amounts of materiel be moved through New York Harbor, the government might share the cost of a tunnel. Though this seems not to have happened, by early 1919 Goethals’s plan had been fleshed out to comprise a single tunnel with two levels, each to accommodate three lanes of traffic in a roadway twenty-four and a half feet wide. The cost of $12 million was to be shared equally by New York and New Jersey; toll revenue was expected to pay for the tunnel in twenty years while at the same time establishing a maintenance fund.
In June 1919, with the necessary state legislation finally passed, the joint commission appointed as chief engineer Clifford M. Holland, because, although “the youngest chief tunnel engineer in the United States and probably in all the world,” he had extensive experience in building subways and tunnels in New York. Holland was born in Somerset, Massachusetts, in 1883, and he graduated from Harvard in 1906 with both bachelor of arts and civil-engineering degrees. He went to New York and became an assistant engineer with the Rapid Transit Commission, which was then building the city’s subways. It would be said of Holland that “he spent more time underground, particularly in compressed air, than any other civil engineer on similar work.” In accepting responsibility for tunneling under the Hudson River, Holland insisted that he be given free rein in selecting his engineering staff, and his strong sense of conviction and determination would be essential to his prevailing when it came to the nature of the tunnel that would be designed. The report of his appointment made clear that he would indeed have broad responsibilities and discretion:
Two unrealized proposals for Hudson River vehicular tunnels, by the firm of Jacobs & Davies in 1910 (left) and by O’Rourke and Goethals in 1919 (photo credit 5.2)
The duties of the chief engineer are to organize an office and field staff sufficient to gather data concerning physical conditions of site, to make the necessary surveys, to prepare estimates of cost and to decide upon the type, size and location of the proposed tunnel. After this work is completed the work of drawing plans and preparing specifications in detail so that contractors may bid will be taken up.
Goethals had prepared a conceptual plan and made a gross determination of feasibility and an estimate of cost, but it was now time to look carefully and critically at all aspects of such designs, consider alternatives, and work out details so as to ensure that the tunnel was buildable and workable. For his responsible charge of the novel undertaking, Holland was to be paid a salary of $10,000 per year. Each member of the board of consulting engineers was also to be paid the same sum, and they were required to meet biweekly or oftener until the type of tunnel was agreed upon. The board consisted of J. Vipond Davies, a partner in the firm of Jacobs & Davies, who before proposing a vehicular tunnel had built the twin tunnels for the Pennsylvania Railroad and the two pairs of the so-called McAdoo (later, Hudson) tubes that carried the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad; Henry W. Hodge, whose extensive experience with bridge design, including a proposed Hudson River crossing, had made him familiar with conditions on the river bottom; William H. Burr, professor emeritus of civil engineering at Columbia University, who had had wide experience in bridge and harbor engineering and had been appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to the international board created to settle the question of what kind of canal to build in Panama; and Colonel William J. Wilgus and Major John H. Bensel, representing military experience and interests.
As with all large engineering projects, the chief engineer was to be assisted by many others. Several key appointments were approved at a meeting of the joint commission on July 1, 1919: Jesse B. Snow was appointed principal assistant engineer, at $5,400 per annum; Milton H. Freeman, resident engineer, $4,200; Ole Singstad, designing engineer, $4,200; and Ronald M. Beck, assistant engineer, $3,000. These were only some of the engineering expenses to be associated with the project, of course; the total cost of engineering services would be on the order of 6 percent of the total project cost, which through the end of 1919 continued to be taken at Goethals’s estimate of $12 million. Thus, when Holland’s report was made public in early 1920, it was full of surprises. Not only was the cost of the project put at nearly twice what had been thought, but Goethals’s design was severely criticized and rejected by Holland. According to his report:
After a very careful investigation of this plan your engineer found that: First, the capacity of the tunnel is greatly overestimated, as the width of roadway is not sufficient for three lines of ordinary and usual traffic, but is sufficient only for two lines of traffic and a three-foot walk; second, the lining of concrete blocks is not of sufficient strength to withstand the external load, and is not suited to the Hudson River conditions; third, the difficulties of construction would be enormously increased and the methods supposed to overcome them are undeveloped and do not insure the safe prosecution of the work, so that its successful completion is a matter of conjecture; fourth, the estimated cost of construction is entirely too low; fifth, the time for construction, fixed at three years, is very much less than would be required.
The report was signed by only four consulting engineers, for Henry Hodge had died in the meantime, and they gave their unanimous support to Holland’s plan for twin cast-iron lined tubes each twenty-nine feet in diameter over Goethals’s proposal for a single forty-two-foot-diameter concrete lined tube. By backing the more conservative plan, they were keeping within the state of the art and demonstrated practice. Although a total of eleven plans were considered, Goethals’s had gotten the most publicity, and it was his that caught the most visible criticism, no doubt because it had theretofore appeared to be the design of choice.
Clifford Holland’s design for a Hudson River vehicular tunnel made up of twin tubes (photo credit 5.3)
Within days of the release of Holland’s report, Goethals wrote to the joint commission requesting data and analysis substantiating the conclusions against his design. Holland suggested that Goethals, like any citizen, could come to the office to examine what was a matter of public record, but the engineer’s staff could not afford to spend the three weeks it would take to assemble the material for him. In the meantime, Edward A. Byrne, chief engineer of the Department of Plant and Structure for New York City and a member of the consulting board serving without special compensation, let it be known that he did not support the report’s conclusion. New York had, of course, a long history of corruption and influence-peddling in the construction of public works, especially in the context of the political machine known as Tammany Hall, and it appears that the situation was once again rife with abuses. Byrne, sitting on a boa
rd as part of his job while his colleagues were drawing annual retainers of $10,000 for their participation, might have been especially vulnerable to bribes and kickbacks.
It turned out that Goethals’s tunnel plan would have employed a process patented by John F. O’Rourke, who had stood to gain a healthy royalty. O’Rourke came to America with his family two years after his birth in 1854 in Tipperary, Ireland, attended Cooper Union, had taught there for some time, had been construction engineer on the Poughkeepsie railroad bridge, had extensive experience with tunnel projects, and held numerous patents for construction methods and equipment. In 1920, hoping to salvage something of the Canal Street tunnel project, he proposed to release his patents in exchange for payments of 25 percent of the estimated $9 million savings that the use of concrete blocks would provide over cast-iron. In other words, O’Rourke would realize in excess of $2 million, which he might be willing to share with those who might help him get it.
With an arrogance that must have been fueled by fame, Goethals continued to promote his tunnel scheme, and the young Holland persisted in rebuffing it. He explained that calculations showed that the large-diameter tunnel would actually have so much buoyancy in the notorious Hudson silt, as the fluidlike material of the river bottom was called, that the tube would float. Furthermore, hardly any of Goethals’s assumptions or assertions withstood the close scrutiny of Holland and his engineering staff; no one had the experience to serve as a guide, because no tunnel of the kind Goethals proposed had ever been driven under any river. In early March, Holland summarized the situation to a meeting of the New Jersey commissioners as follows: “The proposal to build a tunnel of unprecedented diameter of untried materials abandons all that experience in tunnel building has taught in the gradual development to the present state of knowledge and enters upon a new field of uncertainty.” A week later, the joint commissioners passed a resolution effectively directing Holland to devote no more time to considering the Goethals-O’Rourke scheme and to proceed with work on the twin cast-iron tubes.
Public confusion and debate about the tunnel design continued for over a year, and disagreements arose between the New York and New Jersey commissions. After the board of consulting engineers finally rejected the Goethals-O’Rourke scheme, the New Jersey Commission dismissed the current board and ceased compensating them. Two new engineering-board members were appointed by the New Jersey Commission, but the New York Commission refused to recognize them. The New York chapter of the American Association of Engineers, which would evolve into a group that promoted registration for engineers and concerned itself with the status and employment of engineers, issued a report seeking “answers to questions whether the action of the New Jersey Commission did not reflect unfavorably on the members of the board, whether it did not tend to injure the whole engineering profession and was contrary to the public interests, and whether it would not seem undignified and unprofessional for other engineers to accept appointment to the places thus made vacant.” The issue of engineering professionalism and ethics was a growing one, and the report on the dismissal was an occasion to articulate it:
There can be no question that if anybody, private individual, corporation, or public commission, is dissatisfied with the services of any engineer in his or their employ, be he the most eminent consulting engineer or a student just out of college, he has the right to dismiss such engineer and seek other assistance. It is, however, a well established, even though an unwritten rule of professional ethics, that should an employer discharge an engineer, and especially an engineer in responsible charge of work or one employed as a consultant, without reasonable cause, that it is unethical for another engineer to take over the work or the position.
The board of consulting engineers which was appointed and which, in conjunction with the chief engineer and his staff, has brought the enterprise to the point where its successful completion can be practically visualized, is not only a body of eminent engineers but also a body of eminent, well known and public-spirited citizens, and such a board, in connection with an enterprise of this character, should not be, and as a matter of fact cannot be, discharged just as one might discharge an office boy, and especially is it true at such a critical period of the work. Whatever the technical legal status of the matter may be, public sentiment, where properly informed, will not permit it.
Such was the climate in which large public-works projects were conducted. As matters of professional engineering continued to be debated in trade journals like Engineering News-Record, so did the practical matter of awarding contracts to sink shafts for the tunnel continue with the commissions. New Jersey commissioners favored awarding the contract to the Shaft Construction Company, which was incorporated on the very day that the bids were received, and whose low bid was even below the engineers’ estimate. The commissioner of public safety in Bayonne, New Jersey, was reported to be glad that his brother, the principal in the Shaft Construction Company, was “successful enough to underbid one of the largest construction firms in New York.” However, the New York commissioners agreed with Holland, who reported that “in the opinion of your engineer … the fact that a new organization, inexperienced in this work, has submitted such a very low figure raises the question as to whether this company has a proper appreciation of the character and quality of the work to be carried out.” Since each commission was independent, and since there was no formal way to compel agreement between the two state bodies, the matter had to be resolved through public debate and efforts to influence public opinion. In the meantime, the joint commission did agree to send Holland to Europe to inspect vehicle tunnels in such cities as London, Glasgow, Paris, and Hamburg, in order to collect firsthand information for making final design decisions on the Hudson River tunnels, for which invitations to bid on final construction contracts had yet to be advertised.
The New York commissioners continued to oppose the Shaft bid, but that was not the only obstacle to beginning work on the New Jersey side. The land needed for the entrance-and-exit plaza was owned by the Erie Railroad, which was unwilling to make concessions regarding the perpetual retention of some of its tracks alongside a cold-storage plant in which T. Albeus Adams, one of the New Jersey commissioners, had an interest. When an agreement was finally reached, it involved combining the contract for driving the New Jersey access shaft with that for driving the tunnel tubes proper. The delays were estimated to have cost the two states about a half-million dollars, out of a total estimate that had in the meantime grown to almost $29 million. However, the investment was thought to be well worth it, for the tunnel would have a capacity of fifteen million vehicles per year—about twice the number that were crossing the Hudson on ferryboats in 1921.
Even as final plans were being made, there were still some serious doubts as to whether the toxic exhaust of automobiles and trucks could be effectively removed from a tunnel. This was such a critical question that the Bureau of Mines had constructed in Pittsburgh an experimental circular tunnel four hundred feet long through which automobiles could be driven to test a ventilation system. A group of New York and New Jersey commissioners and engineers went to Pittsburgh to ride around this tunnel in cars forty feet apart for almost an hour, having their pulse, blood pressure, and blood samples taken and analyzed for effects of carbon monoxide. After the automobile tests were successfully completed, a smoke bomb was set off in the tunnel to demonstrate how effectively the ventilation system could exhaust the dense and visible gases. The New Jersey commissioners, at least, were not satisfied with such perks of their position, however. With the light at the beginning of the tunnel finally turning green for construction, it was proposed that a twenty-foot granite shaft be erected in the center of the New Jersey plaza to commemorate the commissioners themselves. When presented with this proposal, the New York commissioners declined the honor, but not before one of them suggested that the name and face of the originator of the idea be done in brass rather than bronze.
Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America Page 28