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219 7 while serving as chairman of the Board of Consulting Engineers for the Holland Tunnel, Wilgus continued his consulting practice. Among his most lucrative assignments were valuations of railroads to support applications to the Interstate Commerce Commission for rate increases. Among these was a valuation of the Lehigh Valley Railroad rising out of a dispute over rates charged by the railroad to haul anthracite coal from Pennsylvania. Using the system of valuation prescribed by the ICC, Wilgus directed over 100 assistants in an inventory of the railroad’s property . He calculated the costs of reproducing the railroad at $324,478,300.1 After his testimony before the ICC on behalf of the Lehigh, the railroad’s general counsel argued that, based on Wilgus’s testimony, the railroad was undercapitalized and its current rates did not provide a fair return. JOINING STATEN ISLAND TO NEW YORK CITY The Narrows Tunnel Throughout the 1920s, Wilgus conducted evaluations for a number of other railroads, including the Bangor & Aroostook; the Toledo, St. Louis and Western; the Chicago & Alton; and the New York, New Haven, & Hartford. With the earnings from these consulting assignments Wilgus purchased property along the Connecticut River in Ascutney, Vermont, and built a country retreat that he called “Iridge.” In New York tension continued between the city and the newly established Port of New York Authority. City politicians, led by Mayor John Hylan, opposed the Port Authority on the grounds that the unelected, quasi-public agency usurped local control and threatened the power of elected officials to direct transportation projects in the city and the port. With the publication of a first series of plans, the authority had proposed an underground freight subway for lower Manhattan connected to the railroads in New Jersey by tunnels under the Hudson River, identical in many ways to Wilgus’s small-car freight subway. In addition to the freight subway, the authority had also proposed an “inner” belt line railroad in New Jersey from Piermont, above the Palisades, to Bayonne and Perth Amboy, opposite Staten Island. To move freight more efficiently across the harbor, the authority also planned to build a freight tunnel under the Upper Bay linking Greenville in New Jersey to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, currently served by the car floats of the Pennsylvania Railroad.2 While the New York politicians could not prevent the railroads from partici- 220 GRAND CENTRAL’S ENGINEER pating in a plan for an inner-belt railroad in New Jersey, they viewed the plan for a freight tunnel under the Upper Bay as a direct threat to the inherent power of the city government. In addition, neither the Port Authority’s belt line plan nor the Upper Bay tunnel provided transportation improvements for Staten Island . Mayor Hylan and the New York City political leaders felt a strong obligation to include Staten Island in the city’s efforts to improve mass transit and freight distribution. Hylan, with the support of Staten Island politicians and business leaders, proposed that the city of New York build a tunnel under the Narrows separating Staten Island from Brooklyn. Planned to accommodate both passengers and freight trains, the “Narrows Tunnel” would end Staten Island’s isolation from the other boroughs. The Plan for a Narrows Tunnel In the summer of 1921, Mayor Hylan and the city’s representatives in Albany introduced legislation requiring New York City to construct a freight and passenger tunnel under the Narrows between the boroughs of Richmond (Staten Island) and Brooklyn.3 Further, the law required construction of the tunnel to begin within two years. The New York City Board of Estimate immediately appropriated money to begin planning and directed the board’s chief engineer, Arthur Tuttle, to recruit a group of eminent transportation engineers to serve as consultants. Hylan believed the legislation ensured construction of the Narrows tunnel and dramatically reasserted the city of New York’s local control over transportation improvements. Tuttle turned to William Wilgus to serve as a consulting engineer for the tunnel project. In part, this was because Wilgus had, more than a decade earlier, in 1910, proposed a plan for a belt line railroad in the port of New York, including a rail tunnel connecting Staten Island to Brooklyn.4 Wilgus described Tuttle’s invitation as a new assignment that “unexpectedly came my way, to yield me compensation . . . and embroil me in a political fight.”5 As with all of his professional endeavors, he set to work to prepare a detailed report supporting...

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