History
The tunnels were built in the first decade of the 20th century as part of the Pennsylvania Tunnel and Terminal Railroad, providing a connection between the Pennsylvania Railroad's train station in New York City, Pennsylvania Station, and the railroad's Sunnyside Yard. At that time the LIRR was a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the tunnels allowed the LIRR its first (and to date, only) direct access to Manhattan.
Construction began in 1904. The four tunnels were built simultaneously, digging east from Penn Station, west from Long Island City, and east and west from shafts just east of First Avenue; they opened along with Pennsylvania Station in 1910. (Until 1910, LIRR trains ran to Long Island City, where passengers took ferries across the East River to 34th St. in Manhattan.)
Read more about this topic: East River Tunnels
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“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It is true that this man was nothing but an elemental force in motion, directed and rendered more effective by extreme cunning and by a relentless tactical clairvoyance .... Hitler was history in its purest form.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)