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Why does this article on the old Riverside Expressway tunnel in NOLA give me the creeps?

Posted on 8/15/23 at 7:57 pm
Posted by Joev1
Baton Rouge
Member since Aug 2019
78 posts
Posted on 8/15/23 at 7:57 pm
[link=(Article)]https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/home_garden/tunnel-vision-in-1966-new-orleans-built-a-tunnel-downtown-hoping-the-traffic-would-come/article_04ef20d3-9b8e-52a0-b022-5467685dc857.amp.html[/link]

“…the tunnel was completed in 1966…One year later, New Orleanians received stunning news from Washington. Citing Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, the U.S. Department of Transportation deemed the Riverfront Expressway would indeed do irreversible damage to the historic French Quarter -- exactly as preservationists had argued -- and cancelled the project.”


“…two basements would become one, forming a 20-foot-high flat-ceiling "box culvert" with three lanes of traffic in each direction and a total combined width of 98 feet. Roughly 700 feet long and perfectly straight, the tunnel looked something like a gigantic men's tie box, built of steel and reinforced concrete and set into the deltaic muck between lower Canal and Poydras.”

“Creative citizens in 1969 suggested turning the tunnel into an 820-seat theater performance space. Others envisioned a science museum or "an international food, cultural and entertainment mart" with a high-rise residential complex above. One city official interviewed by the Times-Picayune in 1987 joked the tunnel could be used for "growing mushrooms or for the world's biggest wine cellar;" others called for a "underground swimming hole.”

Today, the tunnel has been renovated and is used for valet parking at Harrah’s casino.



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