Design and Construction
Led by Chief Engineer Charles M. Jacobs, the tunnel design team worked between 1902 and 1904. The first task was digging two shafts, one just east of 11th Ave in Manhattan and a larger one a few hundred yards west of the river. The Weehawken Shaft was completed in September 1904 as a concrete-walled rectangular pit, 56 by 116 ft at the bottom and 76 ft deep. The PRR awarded the North River contract to O'Rourke Engineering Construction Company, which began work upon completion of the two shafts. (At the time, "North River Tunnels" referred to the tunnels east of the Weehawken Shaft; in later years the term has come to include the Bergen Hill tunnels as well.) The tunnels were built with drilling and blasting techniques and tunnelling shields, digging west from Manhattan, east and west from Weehawken, and east from the Bergen portals. The two ends of the northern tube under the river met in September 1906; at that time it was the longest underwater tunnel in the world. In 1905 the John Shields Construction Company received the contract to bore through Bergen Hill, the lower Hudson Palisades; William Bradley took over in 1906 and the tunnels to the Hackensack Meadows were completed in April 1908.
The tunnels' west portals are in North Bergen, at the west edge of the New Jersey Palisades near the east end of Route 3 at U.S. Route 1/9 (40°46′17″N 74°02′31″W / 40.7714°N 74.0419°W / 40.7714; -74.0419). They run beneath North Bergen, Union City, and Weehawken, to the east portals at the east edge of 10th Avenue at 32nd St in Manhattan. (Since about 1968 the east portals have been hidden beneath WNET headquarters on the east side of 10th Ave.) When the top of the Weehawken Shaft was covered is a mystery; the two tracks may have remained open to the sky until catenary was added circa 1932.
Except for a curve west of the west end of Pier 72 that totals just under a degree, the two tracks are straight in plan view, 37 feet apart, from west of 11th Avenue to the Bergen Hill portals.
Read more about this topic: North River Tunnels
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