THE EIGHTH WONDER: THE HOLLAND VEHICULAR 



TUNNEL ' 



By Cabl C. GaAT and H. F. Haqen * 



:\Vltli 30 plates] 



Back in tho second century B. C, a certain Antipater of Sidon 

 composed an epigram in which he enumerated whiit he termed the 

 " Seven Wonders of the World." They were the walls of Babylon, 

 the statute at Olympia by Phidias, tlie hanfTJnf; gardens at Babylon, 

 the Colossus of Rhodes, the pyramids of Egypt, the mausoleum at 

 Haliearnassus, and the temple of Artemis at Ephesus. 



To-day any similar list of wonders, no matter by whom compiled, 

 would doubtless include the pyramids, not merely because they alone 

 have survived the ravages of time, but because they still represent a 

 marvelous achievement of man's handiwork. What the other won- 

 ders would be might afford material for a contest sponsored by some 

 newspaper columnist. But surely there would be a place in such a 

 list for the Holland Tunnel, as the longest subaqueous tunnel in the 

 world, a stupendous project, magnificently conceived and executed. 

 And surely old Antipater himself, however wedded he might be to 

 his own wonders, would to-day be glad to add the Holland Tunnel 

 to his list, as an eighth wonder of the world. 



It is with this belief that the following record of its history has 

 been written, in recognition of the magnitude of the task, of the 

 heroism of its first chief engineer, Clifford M. Holland, and his suc- 

 cessor, Milton H. Freeman, both of whom gave their lives to the 

 undertaking, and of the great advance in the science of ventilation 

 which its construction made possible. 



Of course, a tunnel is no new thing. Primitive man, living close 

 to nature, could hardly have failed to observe evidences of tunneling 

 by animal life about him, and soon made tunnels for his own pur- 

 poses. We know that in ancient Egypt a king, upon ascending the 

 throne, began at once to excavate the long narrow passage leading 



' UeprJnted by permission, with a few omlaslons from a pamphlet entitled "The Eighth 

 Wonder," published by the H. r. Sturtevnnt Co. 



'Grateful acknowledgment is madf for valuable data obtained from the ofBclal reports 

 of the New York and Now .Jersey Tunnel Commissions and from tiie EnRineorlnK News 

 Record, and for permission to rei)rlnt a portion of an article from the magazine Charm, 

 published by L. Bamberger & Co., Newark, N. J. 



677 



