A quick back story as written by The Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
I got a chance to tour the tunnel this past Sunday. Here are some photos...
The entrance of the tunnel is through a manhole in the middle of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street.
I gotta go down there?!
Caution - watch your head!
Entrance to the abandoned tunnel.
View from the other side of the entrance. The stairs were built for the tours. When discovered, it was just a 14 foot drop. As we go further into the tunnel, it eventually reaches 40 ft below the ground.
Bob Diamond, who discovered the tunnel in 1980 at the age of 19, conducted the tour.
The original ladder Bob Diamond used to climb down.
Some abandoned tools.
Starting our half-mile journey into the darkness. Although it may not look it, the tunnel was wide enough for two locomotive trains to travel through at the same time.
Quote:
| The tunnel, which lies below Atlantic Avenue between Hicks Street and Boerum Place, was built in 1844 as part of the Long Island Railroad’s main branch from Brooklyn to Long Island. Walt Whitman had described the tunnel as “dark as the grave, cold, damp and silent.” After the Civil War, when real estate interests convinced the city government not to let steam railroads traverse Downtown Brooklyn, the tunnel was sealed and was supposed to have been filled in. As the decades passed, the memory of it faded and records disappeared. Eventually, even city engineers assumed that the story was mere urban legend. Diamond discovered the tunnel as a young man of 19, after hearing about the legend on a radio show. He began an eight-month — some said Quixotic — quest, visiting libraries, scouring old newspapers. Finally he found an article in a Brooklyn Eagle from the turn of the century which said that a set of plans were stored in the borough president’s office. He visited the office, and was humored by an employee who let him dig through an old box filled with relics — “like old deeds signed by Indians,” says Diamond. To everyone’s amazement except his own, he found the complete plans for the world’s first subway tunnel. The NYC Department of Environmental Protection and Brooklyn Union Gas helped Diamond open the tunnel. Volunteers helped him clear it out, and for several years he offered tours. But after an ill-fated attempt to revive trolley service along the Brooklyn waterfront failed and other plans received serious setbacks, Diamond decided “to heck with it,” he said. Fast-forward a few years. Diamond says he recently received a call from the Department of Transportation asking if he would be interested in starting the tours again. He thought about it, then agreed. “You never know,” he said. “Maybe with a new group in office, things have changed.” |
The entrance of the tunnel is through a manhole in the middle of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street.
I gotta go down there?!
Caution - watch your head!
Entrance to the abandoned tunnel.
View from the other side of the entrance. The stairs were built for the tours. When discovered, it was just a 14 foot drop. As we go further into the tunnel, it eventually reaches 40 ft below the ground.
Bob Diamond, who discovered the tunnel in 1980 at the age of 19, conducted the tour.
The original ladder Bob Diamond used to climb down.
Some abandoned tools.
Starting our half-mile journey into the darkness. Although it may not look it, the tunnel was wide enough for two locomotive trains to travel through at the same time.
