History
The tunnel and approaches were designed by Singstad and Baillie, a New York-based engineering firm specializing in tunnel design, in association with the J.E Greiner Company, a local Baltimore-based firm. The tunnel was formed out of 21 310-foot (94 m) sections individually submerged into the harbor and secured with rocks and backfill; the first of these tunnel segments was sunk on April 11, 1956. The remainder of the tunnel was constructed using the cut-and-cover method, extending from the submerged tubes to the north and south portals.
The tunnel opened on November 29, 1957 (along with most of the Thruway), nearly two months ahead of schedule. At the time, the toll was forty cents. The day the tunnel was opened, it experienced heavy traffic for the first time as thousands of motorists traveled north to Philadelphia to watch the 1957 Army–Navy football game.
Shortly after the nearby Fort McHenry Tunnel opened in 1985 — making up the final link of Interstate 95 in Maryland — the Harbor Tunnel was closed in phases for extensive rehabilitation. It was fully reopened by 1990.
In November, 2007, the 50th anniversary of the tunnel serving travelers was observed.
Read more about this topic: Baltimore Harbor Tunnel
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“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“You that would judge me do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)