A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from November 21, 2017
Hylan’s Holes (abandoned, incomplete Staten Island Tunnel)

Entry in progress—B.P.
   
Wikipedia: Staten Island Tunnel
The Staten Island Tunnel is an abandoned, incomplete railway/subway tunnel in New York City. It was intended to connect railways on Staten Island (precursors to the modern-day Staten Island Railway) to the BMT Fourth Avenue Line of the New York City Subway, in Brooklyn, via a new crossing under the Narrows. Planned to extend 10,400 feet (3,200 m), the tunnel would have been among the world’s longest at the time of its planning, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
 
Construction began in 1923, and the tunnel was excavated 150 feet (46 m) into the Narrows before New York City Mayor John Hylan, a former Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) employee and initial proponent of the tunnel, canceled the project in 1925. The tunnel lies dormant under Owl’s Head Park in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Later proposals to complete the tunnel, including the 1939 plans for the Independent Subway System’s ambitious Second System, were never funded.
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Other names
Officially called the Brooklyn-Richmond Freight and Passenger Tunnel, the Staten Island Tunnel was also to be referred to by four other names:
 
The Narrows Tunnel, after the Narrows, the body of water it was supposed to run under;
The Saint George Tunnel, after one of its terminals in St. George, Staten Island (not to be confused with the tunnel between the terminal and the Tompkinsville station);
The Hylan Tunnel, after former New York City Mayor John Hylan, who oversaw the project. It has also been referred to as Hylan’s Holes in both derogatory and endearing contexts.
   
Bklyner.
25 Things You May Not Have Known About The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge
By Mary Bakija - November 20, 20146
(...)
1. It could have been a tunnel, instead. The original discussion for crossing the Narrows began in 1888 — but that was for a tunnel. After a bridge was proposed and the design nixed, they went back to the tunnel idea, and actually began digging. The abandoned tunnels, which only went 150 feet but still remain, were nicknamed “Hylan’s Holes” after then-Mayor John F. Hylan, who championed the failed project. It went back and forth between tunnel/bridge until talk about a bridge, under the recommendation of Robert Moses, became serious in 1946.

Posted by Barry Popik
New York CityTransportation • Tuesday, November 21, 2017 • Permalink


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