Sunday 13th November 1927

The Holland Tunnel between New York City and Jersey City was officially opened when US President Calvin Coolidge telegraphed a signal from the presidential yacht Mayflower, anchored in the Potomac River. Within an hour, over 20,000 people had walked the 9,250-foot (1.75-mile) distance between New York and New Jersey under the Hudson River, and the next day the tunnel opened for automobile service. The double-tube underwater tunnel, the first of its kind in the US, was built to accommodate nearly 2,000 vehicles per hour. Chief engineer Clifford Milburn Holland resolved the problem of ventilation by creating a highly advanced system that changed the air over 30 times an hour at the rate of over 3 million cubic feet per minute.