NYC & the Holland Tunnel - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

NYC & the Holland Tunnel

As a history buff, I routinely enjoy searching a website called History Place. My most recent search uncovered that the Holland tunnel between New Jersey and New Your City started construction 100 years ago this month, eventually opening in 1927. That brought back memories of my first trip through the tunnel in 1966 as documented briefly at the end of this 2016 blogpost. My recollections about NYC at the time of the original blog were blurry, but somehow they came back to life after reading about the historical milestone for the tunnel. Two high school friends and I existed the tunnel in Manhattan around rush hour in late August, ‘66 and as we did so, a guy standing at the exit waved us over after noticing our out-of-state plates. He asked us if we had a place to stay that night, and when we responded no, he offered to help us find a hotel at no cost because the hotels reimbursed him; we readily agreed so he jumped in the car with us for the drive to the hotel.

Since we were running low on money, we requested a cheap room for the three of us near Times Square that also included parking. He guided us to a local hotel, helped get us checked in and the car parked. The room was adequate, but when we opened the one window shade, all we could see was the brick facing of the adjacent building! A room with a view was not in our price range!

Off we went to explore Times Square, which was amazing with all the lights (and mini-skirted girls!).

We got a bite to eat at a Times Square street vendor, then headed to a dive bar our guide had recommended that didn’t check id's to chug down a few beers before heading back to the hotel. We had slept in the car the prior two nights as described in the 2016 blogpost, so there we were in the city that never sleeps, crashing around 10:00pm!

The next morning we checked out of the hotel and drove around the City, catching the sights like the Statue of Liberty, Greenwich Village, Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, Fifth Avenue and Central Park before heading north through Harlem to check out Yankee stadium in the Bronx, then back across the Hudson River to head back to Ohio via Niagara Falls, Ontario and Detroit, arriving late that night flat broke and dead tired.

Chief Engineer Clifford Holland

Back to the Holland Tunnel, construction during the 1920’s was a challenge, as it would be the longest continuous underwater vehicular tunnel in the world. Originally known as the Hudson River Vehicular Tunnel or the Canal Street Tunnel. It was renamed the Holland Tunnel in memory of Clifford Holland, the chief engineer, following his sudden death in 1924 before the tunnel was opened. Check out this video about the construction process.

The cost was $48 million or about $600 million in today’s dollars. The initial fare was 50 cents, rising to $2 for us in 1966, and now up to $16.

That first trip to New York City was special, even though a blur!

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