For years, stories swirled about an abandoned railroad tunnel hidden below Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue. People reveled in tales of river pirates, who supposedly used the passageway as a base for carrying out raids on the ships that filled New York Harbor in the nineteenth century. Some residents said that the tunnel held buried gold, while others claimed that it had been boarded up by counterfeiters, and still others insisted that it contained huge rats ready to attack any who dared to enter their lair. Despite such rumors, periodic police searches and amateur detectives failed to find the tunnel’s entrance. Finally, in 1980, a determined college student named Bob Diamond persuaded the local gas company to let him explore what lay under an unmarked manhole cover at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street. Crawling through a cramped passageway with a crowbar to fend off any giant rodents, Diamond smashed his way through a wall and rediscovered the world’s oldest subway tunnel.

The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel, courtesy BHRA (www.brooklynrail.net)

Image by Justin N. Lane, 2007

Built for the Long Island Railroad in 1844, the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel remains a masterpiece of engineering. An army of Irish immigrants dug a deep ditch in the middle of the road and reinforced the sides with tons of Manhattan bedrock. For the top, stone masons used a 50-foot-long movable wooden framework to construct a curved roof of interlocking bricks. Once complete, they covered the structure with dirt and street traffic resumed overhead. More than 2,000 feet long, the tunnel remains structurally sound today, with the deepest portion some four stories below the busy avenue. Workers laid a pair of rail tracks side by side within the tunnel to carry trains to and from a station at Red Hook. The terminal acted as a vital hub for a transportation route that began at the Erie Canal in upstate New York and ended in Boston. Once people and cargo crossed the ferry from Manhattan to Brooklyn, they traveled by rail across Long Island, boarded another ferry to Connecticut, and continued again by rail to Massachusetts.

Although the tunnel stood as an extraordinary engineering achievement, it did little to make the realities of rail travel in the middle nineteenth century more tolerable. The constant rumble of steam locomotives made conditions hot and smoky, and rail accidents occurred frequently; the station operated a liquor store to help people cope with the brutal conditions. After little more than a decade, changes in transportation spelled a quick end to the tunnel’s usefulness. Construction of a rail route through Connecticut and Rhode Island to Boston meant that it was no longer necessary to ferry passengers and goods from Manhattan to Long Island. In 1861, Edwin C. Litchfield, whose mansion and land later became Prospect Park, obtained a contract from the city to completely fill in the tunnel. Instead, he pocketed most of the money and only sealed the ends, leaving a single inconspicuous manhole cover as the sole clue that a tunnel ever existed under Atlantic Avenue.

Today, Bob Diamond stands as the city’s unofficial expert and caretaker of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel. Soon after his discovery, Diamond formed the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association (BHRA) to help educate the public about the tunnel’s history and uniqueness. Diamond and his group lead tours of the tunnel approximately twice a month. The manhole at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street remains the only access point. Visitors must climb down a ladder into a slippery entry area before clambering through a concrete wall into the tunnel proper. Over the next hour and a half, Diamond directs a tour filled with stories of deception and intrigue. Though dark and damp, the tunnel is impressive in its scope and design. The brick roof retains some of the original whitewash, intended to make the area seem brighter, and the rough dirt floor shows subtle signs of the iron tracks that once covered it.

The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel’s existence is no longer a mystery, but Diamond hopes that it still holds a few secrets. Early in his search for the tunnel, he heard about an old steam engine buried under Atlantic Avenue. Some say that inside that steam engine lies a portion of the diary of John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln’s assassin. Armed with new funding and a documentary film team, Diamond and his companions intend to lead a search for the lost steam engine and diary later this year, hoping that the missing pages will contain a complete account of everyone involved in the conspiracy to kill the president. In addition to their archeological and detective pursuits, Diamond and the other members of the BHRA are working to recreate a historically accurate trolley line in Brooklyn, eventually using the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel as the centerpiece of its route. But even if no trains ever rumble through the tunnel again, it remains a fascinating and enlightening part of New York’s incredible history.

The BHRA holds a regular tunnel tour every few weeks, typically on Sundays. To find out about their next tour and later events, visit http://www.brooklynrail.net/.