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
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of the martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when the time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)