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
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
—G.M. (George Macaulay)
“Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)
“It is my conviction that women are the natural orators of the race.”
—Eliza Archard Connor, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 9, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)