Report

Report
Author: New York (State) Bridge and Tunnel Commission
Publisher:
Total Pages: 36
Release: 1907
Genre: Bridges
ISBN:

Highway under the Hudson

Highway under the Hudson
Author: Robert W. Jackson
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2011-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0814745032

Choice's Outstanding Academic Title list for 2013 "There is no comparable book on this tunnel. Highly recommended."—Choice Reviews Every year, more than thirty-three million vehicles traverse the Holland Tunnel, making their way to and from Jersey City and Lower Manhattan. From tourists to commuters, many cross the tunnel's 1.6-mile corridor on a daily basis, and yet few know much about this amazing feat of early 20th-century engineering. How was it built, by whom, and at what cost? These and many other questions are answered in Highway Under the Hudson: A History of the Holland Tunnel, Robert W. Jackson's fascinating story about this seminal structure in the history of urban transportation. Jackson explains the economic forces which led to the need for the tunnel, and details the extraordinary political and social politicking that took place on both sides of the Hudson River to finally enable its construction. He also introduces us to important figures in the tunnel's history, such as New Jersey Governor Walter E. Edge, who, more than anyone else, made the dream of a tunnel a reality and George Washington Goethals (builder of the Panama Canal and namesake of the Goethals Bridge), the first chief engineer of the project. Fully illustrated with more than 50 beautiful archival photographs and drawings, Jackson's story of the Holland Tunnel is one of great human drama, with heroes and villains, that illustrates how great things are accomplished, and at what price. Highway Under the Hudson featured in the New York Times Listen to Robert Jackson talk about the book on WAMC Radio

New York Recentered

New York Recentered
Author: Kara Murphy Schlichting
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2019-04-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 022661316X

The history of New York City’s urban development often centers on titanic municipal figures like Robert Moses and on prominent inner Manhattan sites like Central Park. New York Recentered boldly shifts the focus to the city’s geographic edges—the coastlines and waterways—and to the small-time unelected locals who quietly shaped the modern city. Kara Murphy Schlichting details how the vernacular planning done by small businessmen and real estate operators, performed independently of large scale governmental efforts, refigured marginal locales like Flushing Meadows and the shores of Long Island Sound and the East River in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The result is a synthesis of planning history, environmental history, and urban history that recasts the story of New York as we know it.