Subterranean New York – The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel, Brooklyn, NY

Atlantic Avenue Tunnel, also called the Cobble Hill Tunnel, is said to be the oldest tunnel in the world. It definitely is the oldest tunnel in New York and perhaps North America.  It’s an abandon (Brooklyn-Jamaica Railway) Long Island Railroad tunnel that runs approximately 2,517 feet.  An engineering marvel, the tunnel was built in 1844.

The urban legend regarding the tunnel is it was used by river pirates as a base for carrying out rats on the ships in New York Harbor during the 19^th century.  Some New Yorkers think the tunnel contains buried gold, boarded up by counterfeiters, in 1916 the FBI suspected German terrorists were making bombs in the tunnel, and/or there are huge assault rats housed down there.  In the 1920’s the tunnel alleged use for both mushroom growing and bootleg whiskey. Of course it was believed at least one gangster was buried down there in the 1930’s.

 A determined New York Bob Diamond decided he would verify the rumors in 1980. With the approval of the Brooklyn Union Gas Company, a crowbar and determination, Diamond entered an unmarked manhole at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street. The rest is the discovery of the tunnel and history. Bob Diamond remains the city’s unofficial expert and caretaker of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel. After his discovery, he formed the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association (BHRA) to facilitate educating the public regarding the tunnel’s history and distinctiveness. Diamond and his group lead tours of the tunnel approximately twice a month.

The engineering feat was dug by a group of Irish immigrants. It’s a deep ditch in the middle of the street, sides reinforced with Manhattan bedrock. Stone masons used a 50 foot moveable wooden framework to construct the curved roof of interlocking bricks. The structure was completed with dirt on top and street traffic has been moving on the street ever since. The deepest portion of the structurally sound tunnel is four stories below Atlantic Avenue 2000 feet long.

The tunnel was used to carry trains to and from a station at Red Hook. The terminal performed as a essential hub for a transportation route that started at the Erie Canal in upstate New York and finished in Boston. When people and freight crossed the ferry from Manhattan to Brooklyn, they moved by railroad across Long Island, boarded a different ferry to Connecticut, and continued again by railroad to Massachusetts.

By the middle of the 19^th century, the tunnel became obsolete with the construction of the rail route through Connecticut and Rhode Island to Boston.  That meant people and freight no longer had to be ferried from Manhattan to Long Island.

In 1861, Edwin C. Litchfield acquired a contract from the city to totally fill in the tunnel. Not very honest, Litchfield pocketed most of the money and only closed the ends, leaving a single unremarkable manhole cover as the sole clue that a tunnel ever existed under Atlantic Avenue. That manhole at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street is still the only access point to the tunnel.  Visitors climb down a ladder into a slick access area before scrambling through a concrete wall into the tunnel proper. Within the next hour and a half, Diamond conducts a tour filled with stories of deception and intrigue. While murky and clammy, the tunnel is extraordinary in its range and design. The brick roof maintains a quantity of of the original whitewash, intended to make the area seem brighter, and the rough dirt floor illustrates faint signs of the iron tracks. No longer a mystery, Diamond wish the tunnel still holds a few secrets - an old steam engine buried under Atlantic Avenue hiding a portion of the diary of John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln’s assassin.  Even if no trains ever roar through the tunnel again, it still is a mesmerizing and informative part of New York’s hard to believe history.