So a tunnel was to be built connecting Weehawken, New Jersey and Manhattan, New York, and it was to be named Midtown Vehicular Tunnel. In New York City, however, there is the George Washington Bridge, so how could another a great road have such an unimportant name?
On this day December 22nd, in 1937, the Lincoln Tunnel, now renamed, opens. It was engineered by a Norweigan-American civil engineer named Ole Singstad. He revolutionized underwater tunnels, like the Lincoln Tunnel.
The biggest challenged in building the Lincoln Tunnel involved allowing for the carbon-monoxide released from cars to also leave the tunnel, or else people would die of carbon-monoxide poisoning. It had taken over 3 years to complete the tunnel, costing $85 million during the 1930’s, and it solved the problem of air circulation with giant fans at the entrances, the same technique used earlier at the Holland Tunnel nearby. The tunnel carries over 40 million vehicles a year making it one of the busiest vehicular tunnels in the world.