People living in the sprawl surrounding the island of Manhattan are often derided as the bridge and tunnel crowd. But perhaps they should more accurately be called the bridge or tunnel crowd — at least in the case of my family, which was decidedly tunnel.
On every major holiday, we set off on a trip to see the relatives who had remained in New York, and every journey from New Jersey involved a simple question: Holland or Lincoln?
But whichever tunnel we chose, descending beneath the Hudson River in an enclosed tube — as the radio station turned to static and the sunlight disappeared — always held some dark fascination.
What if the river came rushing in? Or the tunnel collapsed? How would we escape? It wasn’t so much fear, I suppose, as morbid fascination.
It seems President Trump has had similar thoughts.
On Monday, as he lamented the crumbling infrastructure in the country, he made a point of noting his own concerns about the tunnels leading into our city.
“Our highways, our bridges are unsafe,” Mr. Trump told a group of governors visiting the White House. “Our tunnels — I mean, we have tunnels in New York where the tiles are on the ceiling and you see many tiles missing.”
He added, “I say to myself every time I drive through, I say, ‘Man, I wonder how many people are hurt or injured when they’re driving at 40, 50 miles an hour through a tunnel and a tile falls off.’”
I turned to Angus Kress Gillespie, a professor of American studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., and the author of “Crossing Under the Hudson,” to see if he could put my mind, and the president’s, at ease.
“As far as I know, no one has been injured by a falling tile,” he said. “But it is an interesting speculation.”
(Government officials said they were not aware of any accidents involving tiles in any of the tunnels leading in and out of the city.)
Professor Gillespie, whose book covers the history of the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, said that when the Holland Tunnel opened 90 years ago, the designers were concerned that the public would be afraid to use it.
“When the project was first discussed, there was some discussion if there should be a tunnel or a bridge,” he said. “Psychologically, people prefer bridges because they don’t feel so confined. When you enter a tunnel, it can be a very scary experience. It is more confined and claustrophobic.”
And in 1927, there had never been anything like the engineering marvel that is the Holland Tunnel. While rail lines ran under rivers, cars spewing carbon monoxide were a different matter.
Only after engineers devised a complex ventilation system to pump out noxious fumes was the tunnel possible.
But the designers’ concerns proved unfounded. Motorists loved the tunnel, and soon some 35 million vehicles a year used it to travel between New York and New Jersey.
It was so successful that construction soon started on a second tunnel, the Lincoln.
Still, even though the public loves its tunnels, trepidation remains, Professor Gillespie said.
“When I give a lecture, I am always asked, ‘Do the tunnels leak?’” he said. The answer: “Yes, they do.”
But not to worry, he said. They are designed to deal with water.
While people driving through the tunnels see only the road below them, the ceiling above them and the walls around them, each tunnel is actually like a square within a tube. And the tube is made of cast-iron sections, Professor Gillespie said.
So when there is leaking — or heavy rain or any other influx of water — the water collects on the bottom of the tube, well below the road, and is pumped out.
“They are constantly removing water,” he said.
Over the decades, the tunnels have proved remarkably durable, Professor Gillespie said.
He described one episode, among the most disastrous in the history of the Holland Tunnel, that occurred at 8:30 a.m. on May 13, 1949.
A tractor-trailer carrying 80 55-gallon drums of carbon disulfide was about a third of the way through the tunnel when a drum fell off.
The amber-colored, volatile liquid caught fire, and soon there was a chain reaction, with a series of fires and explosions.
Sixty-six people were injured, and 27 of them required hospitalization. No one died. But 600 feet of the ceiling and walls were destroyed.
“The tunnel was filled with the crackling of the fire and the falling of ceiling tiles,” Professor Gillespie wrote in the book.
But on that day, the tunnel itself stood firm.