November 13, 1927: The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic. It connects Canal Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, with 12th Street in Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey.
It was the 1st road crossing of the Hudson River between The City and New Jersey. Previously, there had only been ferry boats and, with the addition of the Hudson Tubes (now the PATH system) in 1908 and the construction of New York's Pennsylvania Station in 1913, railroads.
(There's no point in doing a "Scores On This Historic Day" post for the opening of the Hudson Tubes. It was on February 26, 1908. Baseball and football were in the off-season, and there was no professional basketball or hockey to speak of. So there were no scores. Same with the opening of Grand Central Terminal in New York: February 2, 1913.)
The Outerbridge Crossing and the original version of the Goethals Bridge opened the next year, and the Bayonne Bridge opened in 1931, all connecting New Jersey with Staten Island. Manhattan would again be connected to New Jersey by the George Washington Bridge in 1931 and the Lincoln Tunnel in 1937.
The name of the Holland Tunnel has nothing to do with the Netherlands' 1614 founding of the colony of New Netherland, which would include present-day New York State and northern New Jersey. Rather, it was named for its chief engineer, Clifford Milburn Holland.
On April 1, 1922 -- having already supervised the construction of the 14th Street, 60th Street, Clark Street and Montague Street Tunnels for New York's Subway -- he drove a ceremonial pick into the ground at Canal and West Streets, on the Manhattan side of the Hudson.
But the stress of the project of building what was then the longest vehicular tunnel in the Western Hemisphere, and the 5th-longest in the world, wrecked his health. He went to a sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan, hoping to recover. He did not: On October 27, 1924, 20 years to the day after the Subway opened, and one day before the final charge of dynamite connected the tunneling, by air if not yet by road, Cliff Holland died of a heart attack. He was only 41 years old.
As a commuter from New Jersey to New York City, one of my pet peeves is a bus driver hearing that there's a lot of traffic at the Lincoln Tunnel, so he decides to detour off the New Jersey Turnpike, onto the Newark Bay Bridge, and take the Holland Tunnel.
This never works. Every time it's been tried with me on the bus, and it must be half a dozen times by now, the traffic at the Holland Tunnel is every bit as bad. And then, once you get out onto Canal Street, you still have to go 50 blocks up the West Side Highway to get to Port Authority Bus Terminal. It always takes at least 15 minutes longer than if you'd just stuck with the Lincoln Tunnel. It's just not worth it.
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November 13, 1927 was a Sunday. It was the off-season for baseball. The NHL season hadn't started yet. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. But these NFL games were played that day:
* Yes, there was then an NFL team named the New York Yankees. On this day, they beat the Chicago Cardinals, 20-6 at Yankee Stadium.
* The Providence Steam Roller beat the Duluth Eskimos, 13-7 at the Cycledrome in Providence.
* The Cleveland Bulldogs beat the Frankford Yellow Jackets, the NFL's Philadelphia team at the time, 37-0 at Luna Park in Cleveland.
* The Chicago Bears beat the Pottsville Maroons, 30-12 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
* The Green Bay Packers beat the Dayton Triangles, 6-0 at City Stadium in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
* The New York Giants had the week off. They went 11-1-1 that season, the only blemishes on their record both coming at the hands of the Cleveland Bulldogs: An October 2 tie, 0-0 at Luna Park; and an October 16 loss, 6-0 at the Polo Grounds. But the Giants closed the season by defeating the Yankees, 14-0 on December 4 at the Polo Grounds, and 13-0 on December 11 at Yankee Stadium. This enabled the Giants to edge the 7-2-1 Packers for their 1st NFL Championship, in their 3rd season of play.