Conquering Gotham

by Jill Jonnes

  Back in Gotham, the city was tense with political strife. William Randolph Hearst was running hard for governor of New York State, electrifying huge crowds at elaborately orchestrated campaign rallies. A political loner and natural autocrat, Hearst had parlayed his mother’s fortune and his years of bare-knuckled press attacks on corporate and Tammany greed into a juggernaut candidacy. The previous night, followers waving American flags had jammed Carnegie Hall to hear Hearst, roaring to their feet in great waves of ovations and flags when he appeared, a stiff, uneasy figure in his now trademark somber long frock coat. Irate Tammany bosses, who had thwarted Hearst’s 1905 mayoral bid by deep-sixing stolen ballot boxes in the rivers, knew they had little choice but to accept Hearst as the Democratic candidate. Hearst operatives had plastered the city with campaign posters featuring his formal portrait.

  From the White House, an alarmed President Roosevelt wrote privately to one editor: “I so thoroly dislike and despise…Hearst…[His] private life has been disreputable. His wife was a chorus girl or something…He preaches the gospel of envy, hatred, and unrest. His actions go far to show that he is entirely willing to sanction mob violence…He is the most potent single influence for evil we have in our life.”

  On the water, those visceral power struggles seemed far away, as the PRR tugboat chugged past Albany day steamers, coastal steamers up from New Orleans, oyster sloops, and tugs towing Erie Canal coal barges. Gulls wheeled in the breezes. Downriver, the railroad ferries lumbered back and forth, plying their routes, whistles hooting.

  Charles Jacobs was waiting at the Weehawken pier, clad in a plain work suit. He greeted the group stepping off the tugboat, shaking hands with a clutch of excited newspaper reporters, effusively welcoming Alfred Noble and Henry Japp of the struggling East River tunnels, General Charles Raymond, James Forgie, and the other engineers. In high humor, he led the way down into the North Tunnel, riding in the Weehawken cage elevator with the dimple-chinned John F. O’Rourke, famously silent president of the tunnel’s construction company. As a young engineer, O’Rourke had erected some of Manhattan’s early elevated lines as well as the Poughkeepsie Bridge, and in recent years his firm had built (by the caisson method) the foundations of many of the city’s celebrated new skyscrapers, including the Commercial Cable Building.

  The entire large party, now forty-five strong, passed through the dungeonlike air lock apparatus in two groups for the requisite ten claustrophobic minutes, acclimating to a tunnel air pressure of twenty pounds. “No great discomfort was experienced,” the man from the Herald reported of his own passage. However, “one of the press agents of the company fainted in the air lock in a realistic manner.” That abashed fellow was escorted back up to the surface. Upon entering the bowels of the North Tunnel, the Evening Post reporter peered about in the shadowy netherworld, noting that the usually cluttered, slimy tunnel workings had been “cleaned out for the occasion and ten long lines of electric lights were festooned over the steel ribs of the sheathing.” The chatter of the men echoed eerily in the damp metallic space. What no reporter knew (or would be told) on this festive tour was why the work of cementing had not been started. That would require revealing Samuel Rea’s closely held secret and continuing affliction.

  Alfred Noble is in oilcloth coat and bow tie to left of Charles Jacobs, center. Charles Raymond is to right with dog.

  Despite Rea’s fears, Jacobs had pressed the work on the North River tunnels using the much heavier iron segments. But to their collective dismay, they had had no visible effect in resolving the mysterious oscillations. All the engineers agreed now that the North River tunnels were moving, but they could not agree on whether it was both up and down. Worse, they still did not know why they were moving. All through the spring and summer, the board of engineers had held tortured sessions examining all manner of measurements and scrutinizing various screw piles—would steel be better than iron?—and then how best to anchor the tunnels. On September 7, even as the board was once again meeting, Rea had written Cassatt a very grumpy letter, complaining that “Mr. Jacobs probably still believes implicitly that there never can be any occasion for holding the tunnels from any upward movement, and both he and Mr. Noble believe that there will be some downward settlement of the tunnels, but neither of them can say why the tunnels should settle other than the fact that they believe [William McAdoo’s] Hudson Tunnels have acted in that way.”

  From the very start, when Rea had contemplated how best to span the Hudson River, he had wondered, “Can a proper tunnel be constructed through the silt formation which is there encountered that will, after completion, withstand the rack and wear and tear of heavy trains passing through it at high speed?” He had been convinced it could, but since learning that the tunnels were moving about in the silt, now wondered anew, “Would not the structure ‘work’ under the action of heavy trains? We have no precedent to go by, as all subaqueous tunnels of like construction are through a different formation than is found at New York. Therefore, it is largely a matter of speculation.”

  Now that they still did not know why the tunnels moved or what this movement might portend, Rea had no problem imagining the worst. What if a crowded passenger train weighing seven hundred tons rumbled down under the river en route to Penn Station some years hence and the tunnel began to crack? The ensuing calamity would be too awful to contemplate. The specter of flooded trains full of drowned passengers had haunted Rea ever since General Raymond had come to see him at his home the past April.

  Consequently, Rea had been in no mood for rejoicing a week earlier when he alerted Alexander Cassatt by cable up in Bar Harbor: “The distance between the two ends of the north tunnel is one hundred and fifty feet, so that they will meet before long…Jacobs just advised me that the alignment on the north tunnel is within one eighth of an inch…there can be no doubt about the result. I think it is highly satisfactory.” At this historic moment, when the two tunnel halves were about to meet up so perfectly, deep under this ancient alluvial riverbed, Rea could take only perfunctory pride in the feat.

  Even as Jacobs’s first tunnel was reaching completion, Rea complained to Cassatt, “I am not satisfied with the way we have gone on heretofore, and have told Mr. Noble and Mr. Jacobs…that it was up to the Board of Engineers to determine what was the very best thing to do and then complete a final plan and proceed with its execution…if we, with the very best data we can secure, build our tunnels in a way that they are absolutely secured against any upward or downward movement, we can feel that we have done our full duty and are absolutely safe, and I am not going to approve anything until I am satisfied that what we are doing will be within the range of any possible future maximum and minimum pressures.” Rea was simply in no mood for celebrations.

  Chief Engineer Jacobs, however, was understandably jubilant. After all, for decades experts and know-it-alls had insisted such tunnels under the North River could not be built. There had been the many months of laboriously removing all those piles, some by machine, many by ax, overcoming the endless riprap, making sure not to damage the New York piers or harbor bulkhead, besting the irksome quicksand, countering the deadly air blows, and waiting out the worrisome halts when the alignment seemed off. Two workers had given their lives, one a sandhog who “was suddenly submerged in the quicksand” ahead of the shield and another a man who had died of the bends. It was true that the tunnel movements remained a mystery, but Jacobs was confident that answers and solutions would come in good time. Last May, just before sailing for London for vacation, he had written Rea, “I sincerely believe that the questions on the tunnel construction are absolutely clearing themselves up, which will free you and all from anxiety as to their stability.”

  Jacobs was not the only one brimming with pride. On the Gotham side of the tunnel, the New York sandhog crews had raced to best their Jersey rivals, erecting their heavy iron rings at breakneck speed to be first across the underwater state line. On August 28, they had bolted together the ring that touched New
Jersey. All told they had installed 692 rings of ordinary iron, and then 571 of the heavier rings, for a total of 1,263. To make their point, the New Yorkers pressed victoriously on through Jersey silt, erecting another three tunnel segments on subaqueous Jersey territory. Thus, the New York sandhogs upheld Gotham’s reputation for push, drive, and gumption. And its status as the most cosmopolitan of cities. For, noted the Evening Post reporter, “Men of all nationalities have built the Pennsylvania tubes under the Hudson, negroes having done a large part of the job…there must be something about the compressed air which generates energy and enthusiasm, for the men vied with one another to make the record number of rings.”

  Even as the two sandhog crews were racing one another to the state line, Jacobs and his engineers descended into the tunnels near the New York side of the river and spent several days meticulously checking the alignment measurements, to ensure that the two tunnel halves were truly on course to match up. Expounded Jacobs to a reporter, “Here we have two enormous iron tubes of twenty-three feet in diameter driven for 6,000 feet under water, and yet expected to join as accurately as the sections of a bridge which can be continuously measured…We feel confident that our work will be a success. Nevertheless, it is only when the actual fact is proved that we can heave a sigh of relief and be refreshed to continue our labors.”

  To measure the final alignments of the two tunnels, Jacobs had his engineers bore a hole through the side of the North Tunnel’s cast-iron lining in three places—near New York, near New Jersey, and in midriver. Then, they forced a six-inch hollow pipe through each hole and through the mud and silt until it touched the side of the nearly completed southerly tunnel. Next they drove each of those pipes through that tunnel’s lining. “After these connections had been made the ‘review’ developed into a study of angles,” explained one engineer. “When the four lines through the centres of the tubes and the six-inch pipes were joined, these four lines formed four similar angles.” To be but an eighth of an inch off after three years was, as the New York Times exclaimed, “hardly short of wonderful, even among engineers used to mathematical exactness,” especially when the tunnels were advancing toward each other “not in broad daylight” but “beneath all that mud and water.”

  When the two shields of this first almost-completed North River tunnel had approached within feet of meeting up, the engineers stopped work to gauge the exact distance. From a shield compartment, the men pushed a long six-inch-wide hollow pipe out into the river muck, probing, prodding, and finally pushing right through the other advancing shield. The exultant engineers and New York sandhogs peered through that pipe, razzing their rivals on the New Jersey crew. With good grace, the Jersey sandhogs ceremoniously pushed a box of cigars through the pipe, a victory trophy to the conquering New Yorkers. On both sides of the shields, men were giddy and gleeful. Now the engineers very gingerly pushed forward again until the shields truly met metal-to-metal, deep under the middle of the river at 7:50 p.m. September 11, 1906, like giant mechanized kissing moles. It was just as planned, but wondrous nonetheless.

  The next day, a proud and delighted Charles Jacobs led an inspection party through the tunnel out to the very center of the river. This newest and deepest section of the tunnel lay ninety-seven feet below the high tide mark. It did not do to dwell too much on the fact that far above, all manner of ocean liners and laden barges were passing overhead. As the merry group neared the Jersey shield, the Weehawken sandhogs spotted Jacobs and unleashed raucous whoops, hoots, and wildest clapping, generating a wall of noise that rang up and down the iron and steel lining of the tunnel. Red, blue, and white electric lights blazed all around the Greathead shield.

  As the applause and laughter subsided, Jacobs mounted a wooden, mud-smeared ladder propped against the shield and announced in mock solemnity, “I am proud to lead the way for the first time through the Pennsylvania tunnel from the Jersey shore into New York City.” With that, he stepped through the New Jersey shield, crossed a little plank bridge built just that morning, and passed into the outer compartments of the New York shield. Gleeful pandemonium erupted. A photographer began flashing one picture after another, catching Jacobs in a blaze of phosphorescent light as he took that historic step. More flashes and cheers followed, as the tunnel engineers and sandhogs proudly posed for posterity, including General Raymond, who was walking through the tunnel with the help of his dog. At long last, despite the doubters and many travails, the first railroad tunnel had connected Manhattan to the mainland. The most crucial link in the Pennsylvania Railroad’s gargantuan civil engineering project was now a reality. It was, as the New York Times wrote, “one of the greatest feats in the history of modern engineering.”

  The aligning of the North River tunnels.

  As soon as Jacobs emerged from the tunnel works and into the busy world of rainy Manhattan, he dispatched a Western Union telegram to Alexander Cassatt in Bar Harbor that was a model of modest understatement: “I am pleased to report that we have just come from Jersey to New York through the North tunnel and that the shields have met exactly on line. All is satisfactory.”

  And then Jacobs, O’Rourke, and their large gang of engineers and reporters made their way uptown to the splendid Delmonico’s at Fifth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street. With the orchestra playing and the French wines and champagnes flowing freely, everyone dined superbly on lobster à la Newberg, quail, and of course, well-aged steaks. Later, amidst the sated merriment and cigar smoke, Charles Jacobs stood up and raised his glass to O’Rourke: “You and your staff have accomplished what was thought a few years ago to be an impossibility!” Raucous applause and roars! Mr. O’Rourke stood to toast Jacobs: “The credit is yours! To the best tunnel engineer in the world!” General Raymond graciously stood and acknowledged O’Rourke and Jacobs: “For the excellence of the construction!” Then, caught up in the fun, the general added, “There is more danger from Mr. O’Rourke and his automobile than there is from his tunnel.” Jacobs sprang up, exultant: “Today is the happiest moment of my life!” The men rose to their feet and burst into lusty song as the champagne and wine flowed on.

  Samuel Rea was notably absent from both the historic saunter through the tunnel and from the champagne and fun at Delmonico’s. Rea, feeling conspicuously unhappy, could be found brooding in the PRR’s Cedar Street skyscraper offices, its windows wreathed in mist. That afternoon at 3:45 p.m. he sent Alexander Cassatt a terse telegram: “North tunnel hudson river joined shortly after ten o’clock engineering party walked from New Jersey into New York.” Rea could not comprehend, in light of what they knew, how Jacobs could be so sanguine and certain about the tunnels.

  When Jacobs hosted a second triumphant tunnel walk less than a month later on Tuesday October 9, Rea was again notably absent. “For the first time in history,” noted the New York Times, “a party of men walked from Manhattan to Weehawken yesterday, and walked back by a different route…The occasion was the opening of the second bore of the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnel; the realization of the greatest engineering feat ever attempted.” Now, however, no further work would be done in the tunnels—the thick layers of concrete, the electric wiring, or tracks—until the board of engineers knew why the tunnels were shifting. And what to do about it.

  Up in Bar Harbor, Cassatt had been personally reviewing all the studies and reports and sharing Rea’s qualms. He had caught a bad bout of whooping cough from his grandchildren, and he was deferring his return until he felt more fully recovered. On September 12, as Jacobs was celebrating the completion of his first North River tunnel, Cassatt had responded to Rea’s missives with this curt message for his board of engineers: “This whole subject should be exhaustively studied. The Board has nothing so important before it at this time.”

  The completion of this first North River tunnel was a great astonishment to the public, which had heard no tunnel news except the very public woes and disasters besetting the PRR’s East River tunnels. As far as New Yorkers were concerned, in that fall of 1906, t
he imminent completion of any of the city’s many long-aborning subway and railroad projects could only be good news. Every commuting citizen of Gotham and its suburbs daily experienced the considerable travails of traveling in and out of Manhattan under current conditions, a sorry situation well summed up by the New York Times: “The somewhat antiquated and greatly overburdened Brooklyn Bridge used to its full capacity as limited by its old and totally inadequate terminal facilities; the Williamsburg Bridge used to the capacity of its trolley tracks, with the elevated section neglected and rusting; no tunnels under the East River; no tunnels under and no bridges over the North River.” In coming years, all that would be changing, as this tunnel tour showed. Until then, the public jammed across the Brooklyn Bridge or patiently boarded the crowded ferries.

  Jacobs’s tunnel tour—with its many reporters—reflected a major rethinking of the PRR’s usual tight-lipped attitude toward the press. In the wake of the ICC scandals, Cassatt had hired the youthful Ivy Lee, an enthusiastic pioneer in the nascent art of corporate public relations. The young firm of Parker & Lee was to deal with journalists and present “our side of the various railroad questions.” A Princeton graduate, Lee, twenty-nine, had worked as a reporter for both Pulitzer and Hearst, and thus knew the New York press, and had done p.r. for Mayor Seth Low’s second (losing) campaign in 1903.