Notes from the Underground: The Secret Tunnels of Brooklyn

If you ever thought you heard echoes under the high heels of women on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, it’s possible you weren’t just hearing things. In 1981, Brooklyn native Bob Diamond confirmed the existence of a massive tunnel that stretches some 1,600 feet under Atlantic Ave. Recently, there has been a flurry of renewed interest in the tunnel, including a documentary currently in production about Diamond’s search. In fact, the story of Diamond’s quest nearly rivals the excitement of his discovery.

In the late 1970s, Diamond was an engineering student with a taste for New York transit lore. He first heard about the tunnel’s possible existence on a radio show, which hosted a discussion about a book called “The Cosgrove Report” by G.J.A. O’ Toole. The report suggested, among other things, that lost pages of John Wilkes Booth’s diary are hidden in a train car buried in a secret tunnel beneath Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

Interest piqued, the young Diamond called into the radio program for more information, but hit a dead end. “I scoured through all the newspapers printed in Brooklyn during the 19th and 20th centuries,” Diamond recalls. “I found an article in ‘The Brooklyn Eagle’ June 23, 1911, a full page about the tunnel which told about a set of plans in the borough president’s office” he continued.

After persuading the lock on an old metal box in the borough president’s office, Diamond found the original plans for the tunnel amidst Dutch histories and other archaic deeds. The tunnel, which was built in 1844, was meant to help prevent trolley cars from striking pedestrians. (Apparently, pedestrian-trolley car accidents where such a problem in 19th century Brooklyn that the original name for the Brooklyn Dodgers was the Brooklyn Trolley-Dodgers.) When the tunnel was completed, the roughly twelve-block stretch became the world’s first “grade-separated” transportation or “subway.” However, by 1850, the first subway was declared a nuisance, shut down, and ordered to be refilled with earth.

Enter Electus Litchfield, contractor-swindler. It is Litchfield who Bob Diamond can thank for his tunnel. Litchfield was paid $130,000 to refill the tunnel, but instead simply capped its ends, sealed its manhole covers, and forged documents to state that the tunnel had been completely refilled. After that, the world’s first subway was forgotten.

That is, until 1981 when a little blue dot on Diamond’s “treasure map” led him to a smooth manhole cover near the intersection of Court Street and Atlantic Avenue. After removing the cover with Department of Transportation workers, Diamond crawled seventy feet to find a small door. With a long metal bar, he punched through the tunnel’s roof and broke through to its cool interior. It measured seventeen feet tall, twenty-one feet wide, and some 1,611 feet long.

But there was something missing—the train.

“Something inside of me told me that the tunnel was real, that it wasn’t just someone’s wishful thinking,” recalls Diamond. “That’s the same gut instinct that I have about the other side of that stone wall.” Diamond suspects there is another six blocks of tunnel closed off with a bulkhead, behind which, he believes, will be the missing locomotive.

Now more than thirty years since his quest for the tunnel and its train began, Diamond hopes that 2009 will finally be the year he breaks through the wall, proving or disproving the myth of the mystery locomotive once and for all.

Diamond gives 1.5 hour tours of Brooklyn’s hidden tunnel. The next tour is scheduled for April 19. Check here for more details.

A documentary about Diamond’s quest, entitled “What’s Behind the Wall?,” is currently in production. Watch a preview of the upcoming documentary below: