Searching for History,
But going down for the Art of It

By Gabriel Rodríguez-Nava and Michael R. Schreiber

rush of cold wind told Bob Diamond he had finally found the tunnel underneath Atlantic Avenue. The first thing that came into his mind then was the time an employee at the Transit Museum had advised him several months earlier not to waste his time looking for the rumored Brooklyn tunnel. But as Diamond recalls, "that was quickly followed by a feeling of "wow, what an amazing place to look at. It was like being in another world because it was very silent underneath and just above, traffic kept on rushing and bustling."

Pride written all over his face, Diamond kneels in front of the legendary manhole c. 1980. PHOTO: Andy Feldman.

For years, the tunnel had served as the inspiration for many urban legends that ultimately helped to motivate Diamond on his quest for the lost tunnel. It was a mysterious passageway that Walt Whitman had once described as being "of Acheron-like solemnity and darkness;" a place where John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin, had supposedly hidden the missing pages of his diary in 1865. Or even more imaginatively, the tunnel from which the noise of "ghost trains" still emanating into the bathrooms of many a Brooklynite.

However inspiring, the legends did not help Diamond much. A novelist who wrote about Booth admitted he only mentioned the tunnel to make his story more interesting. Similarly, a WABC radio announcer who in 1979 said he had a friend who could hear the ghost train from his house, confessed there was actually no such friend. He just wanted to make the AP wire more interesting.

Still, Diamond refused to give up. At the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, he found a map from the 1850s detailing the existence of the tunnel. There, following the advice of a librarian, he found a Brooklyn Daily Eagle article published in 1911 heralding Brooklyn as the place with the oldest subway in the world. Initially, the reporter of the article was going through the borough president's trash for evidence of fraud, but what he found instead were a set of plans for the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel. Soon thereafter, Diamond found a duplicate copy in the Brooklyn Borough archives.

Armed with this evidence, Diamond first queried the water company. But instead of help, he only received weirder-than-weird stories involving poisonous gasses, giant alligators and fatal water floods. So instead, he tried the folks at Brooklyn Union Gas Company (now KEYSPAN,) whom Diamond said still remembered him because of a science fair prize he won as a kid. The gas workers went with him to the manhole that was left as the only entrance to the until-then sealed tunnel, and as Diamond recalls laughing: "they gave me an air tank for the poisonous gasses and a stick for the alligator."

The 1982 voluntary crew that made it all possible. PHOTO: Courtesy BHRA

As Diamond went down into the manhole, he found himself in a tight dirt-walled chamber. But soon enough, he noticed a crevice between the walls and the arched brick ceiling. He crawled into the space and found a concrete doorway that Diamond and the gas workers broke into. Payday had finally arrived.

ince the tunnel's discovery in 1981, thousands of New Yorkers have gone with Diamond on tours. "Everybody wants to be Ed Norton for a day," said Diamond. But aside from providing an unusual home-based tourist experience for New Yorkers, the Atlantic Avenue tunnel has been used most recently as an unconventional art space of sorts. Last fall, thousands waited in line to submerge themselves in the artworks installed by Ars Subterranea.

With its inaugural event in November 2002, Ars Subterranea, an association formed by artists, historians, architects and urban explorers, gave a first installment of their mission: to safeguard abandoned relics in New York by restoring them to life with art events. The initiative to found this association came during a previous underground event organized by several of the members now comprising Ars Subterranea. The evening ended with a banquet inside the Atlantic Tunnel. Julia Solis, the association's director, recalls that after the feast, "one of the guests said: 'I will never see the city the same way again.' That triggered the a-ha! moment. The events we had previously organized had been very underground, very intricately choreographed and not accessible to larger groups. But it occurred to me then to found an organization that would bring this sort of experience to a larger audience."

"I was very excited to learn that this incredible underground passage was made available to the public," said Christina Fuchs, a self-proclaimed art lover and "tunnel mole." "If you think about it, this is the opposite of going to a squeaky-clean gallery or museum where art is placed inaccessibly high on marble pedestals. This is like going down into your subconscious and getting yourself creatively dirty with memories and fantasies. I can't wait for the next event here."

The mysterious passage that managed to even inspire Whitman, rediscovered. PHOTO: Andy Feldman

Fortunately for Fuchs, she won't have to wait long. This upcoming March, Ars Subterranea will host an underground film exhibit curated by Bryan Papciak
and Jeff Sias. (For more information, go to slide show on sidebar.)

The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel has also been included in the National Register of Historic Places. During World War I, cagey US investigators dug pits throughout Atlantic Avenue in search of German spies that they suspected could be lurking in the tunnel manufacturing mustard gas. They didn't find any body, but one of them took the time to leave something behind: a graffiti mark that Diamond would discover almost seven decades later. More importantly, there are still two sections of the tunnel which remain walled-off. Diamond believes, one or two 19th century locomotives may still remain burried.

Despite all this, Diamond has been involved in disputes with several governmental agencies, including the Regional Plan Association, that have tried to demolish or substantially alter the tunnel for a sewage and subway extension projects. But fortunately for Diamond, the Brooklyn Historical Railway Association, of which he is president, owns a long term lease of the tunnel. Among the plans that BHRS has for the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel, is the restoration of a light rail trolley line that would run from Red Hook to Borough Hall in Brooklyn. That would still leave the tunnel available for events like those organized by Ars Subterranea.

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