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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 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.
“…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.
8
Posted on 8/15/23 at 7:58 pm to Joev1
Damn. That’s interesting. Thanks for posting.
Posted on 8/15/23 at 8:00 pm to Joev1
I don’t know? Why does it?
Seems like a perfectly normal article about a failed piece of infrastructure.
Seems like a perfectly normal article about a failed piece of infrastructure.
Posted on 8/15/23 at 8:00 pm to Joev1
Because you are a pussy? 
Posted on 8/15/23 at 8:02 pm to CocomoLSU
It's where they buried Hoffa.
Posted on 8/15/23 at 8:02 pm to 0x15E
Something about a large, dark, abandoned space underground is creepy to me
Posted on 8/15/23 at 8:04 pm to 0x15E
Fun fact.
If you look at a Google map image of where canal street meets the Badine St. W/E split, you’ll see two line lines facing north/south.
That is where the two lanes of freeway were to exit the tunnel and continue elevated across the FQ waterfront.
If you look at a Google map image of where canal street meets the Badine St. W/E split, you’ll see two line lines facing north/south.
That is where the two lanes of freeway were to exit the tunnel and continue elevated across the FQ waterfront.
Posted on 8/15/23 at 8:10 pm to Joev1
Dufuq kind of link is that?
Posted on 8/15/23 at 8:14 pm to 0x15E
quote:
you look at a Google map image of where canal street meets the Badine St. W/E split, you’ll see two line lines facing north/south
Where the Entergy substation is? Cool.
Posted on 8/15/23 at 8:16 pm to Joev1
Just another spot to get carjacked
Posted on 8/15/23 at 8:17 pm to Joev1
that doesn't creep me out but it is interesting.
Posted on 8/15/23 at 8:26 pm to Joev1
Another interesting tid bit here. When the Feds (LBJ’s administration no less) rejected the riverfront route, the interstate was put on the N. Claiborne route. The so-called racist overpass. In all the articles about that, we never seem to hear that LBJ made it happen.
This post was edited on 8/15/23 at 8:29 pm
Posted on 8/15/23 at 9:16 pm to 0x15E
Posted on 8/15/23 at 9:55 pm to Joev1
quote:
abandoned space underground
Except it’s not.
Posted on 8/15/23 at 9:56 pm to SloaneRanger
quote:
Another interesting tid bit here. When the Feds (LBJ’s administration no less) rejected the riverfront route, the interstate was put on the N. Claiborne route. The so-called racist overpass. In all the articles about that, we never seem to hear that LBJ made it happen.
WRONG.
If you knew, or even just bothered to read the linked article, you'd know that:
A. I-10 along Claiborne was never a "back-up" plan, it and the riverfront expressway were BOTH there since 1957 based upon earlier plans:
It has since become a kind of revisionist history to say that it was placed on Claiborne because the Riverfront Expressway was killed.
B. The Riverfront Expressway was killed by the feds in July 1969 during the Nixon administration, not during LBJ's administration.
Read the article link FULLY as well as others like this:
The Second Battle of New Orleans
Posted on 8/15/23 at 10:20 pm to sqerty
quote:among other people - one of my great uncles worked on it - they new it was never destined for use when they were building it
It's where they buried Hoffa.
Posted on 8/15/23 at 10:47 pm to BRich
Read with interest the involvement of Robert Moses in the project. He had gotten another bridge proposed across the East River in lower Manhattan to tie in with an elevated freeway that would have destroyed the Battery and environs much as the elevated proposal would have done to the French Quarter and also obscured views of the Brooklyn Bridge. Roosevelt could not stop him while Governor of New York, but later, as President he got the War Department to kill the project as the Brooklyn Navy Yard was upstream of the proposed bridge.
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