Out-of-Place Horses: Underwater Horses, 1919

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 895

Earlier in this blog I’ve written about underground horses

and horses in the air (Towards a History of Horses in Flight in the 19^th Century),

and now to horses underwater. Or sort of.  This image from The Illustrated London News (5 April 1919) presents a cross-section of a proposed Hudson River tunnel connecting the Jersey City and New York City.  (At the time, Jersey City was much more important and productive, much mire alive than it is today.) Proposals for tunnels have been bobbing around for quite some time, including this one that appears in the Scientific America for 1 November 1890¹.  The first vehicular traffic tunnel under the Hudson River—the Holland Tunnel, connecting Hoboken and downtown Manhattan—would be completed in 1927; the Lincoln, connecting midtown to Weehawken, NJ, came next.in1937.(The toll for the Lincoln in 1937 was 50 cents, or equal to $7.80 in 2009 CPI-adjusted dollars.)

By that time there were no allowances for “slow horse-drawn trucks” that were shown in the 1919 cross section.

Notes:

1.”Progress of the Great Railway Tunnels under the Hudson River between New York and Jersey City.” Scientific American, 1 Nov 1890

And  just for good measure, here's another bit:  this time showing a horse at work in a tunnel under the Hudson: