History of downtown tunnels?

[xen0blue]

Anyone know the history of the downtown tunnel system? I heard from someone they were actually used as a kind of "subway" back in the late 1800s/early 1900s but instead of subway cars, they had horses and buggies going through them. Anyone know if this is true and how they progressed to what they are?

[Mephis Gooseberry]

Dallas News - History of Tunnels (http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/spe/2002/hiddenhistory/1901-1925/070002dnhhtunnels.44332667.html)

1901-1925
1924: Santa Fe tunnels
System fed downtown's fashion industry, transported troops

07/03/2002

By BRIAN ANDERSON / Dallas Web Staff Buried beneath the bustling streets of downtown Dallas, a labyrinth of hidden history lies in the darkness.

Constructed in 1924, the railroad tunnels beneath the former Santa Fe Freight Terminal carried merchandise to a fledgling fashion district and soldiers to their duty in World War II.

It’s rumored that a river of bootlegged booze once flowed through the caverns during the days of prohibition.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” laughed Bob LaPrelle, executive director of the Age of Steam Railroad Museum at Fair Park. “I do know the Santa Fe Railroad in those days was known for parties.”

The tunnels have long been silent. The rusty rails have mostly disappeared behind brick walls and ribbons of concrete. But the lore surrounding the former train complex still packs a full head of steam.

“They are kind of intriguing and interesting,” Mr. LaPrelle said, noting that the tunnels still prompt occasional inquiries from local railroad buffs.

Four buildings on three adjacent city blocks - bound by Young, Commerce, Griffin and Field streets - made up the original complex that centralized the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad’s transfer and warehousing operations in downtown Dallas.

Only three buildings remain today: Santa Fe Building I now houses offices for the federal government; Santa Fe Lofts, formerly known as the Garment Center, now contains about 200 apartment units; and a single abandoned warehouse at the complex’s southernmost point lies across from the Dallas City Hall.

The Ingram Freezer Building, the third in the north-south building chain, was demolished in 1988. A parking lot has taken its place.

The complex buildings were linked by a subterranean rail tunnel meant to relieve downtown train congestion.

“The tunnels and the Santa Fe facility resulted from the restrictions for building downtown,” Mr. LaPrelle said, explaining that a web of tracks had come to choke pedestrian and auto traffic in the downtown area. “It was a way to get things in and out.”

Three sets of underground tracks served the complex, branching from a central subsurface line, which emerged from the ground to the south.

“The tunnels are still there, under the buildings,” said Dan Monaghan, a Garland optometrist who helped found the Age of Steam Museum and currently serves on the board of directors for Dallas Area Rapid Transit.

Smokeless, miniature engines moved rail cars through the Santa Fe underground.

“It was a small steam locomotive. It just had four wheels on it and a huge steam boiler – but no fire box,” Mr. Monaghan said.

The engines, sometimes referred to as “fireless cookers,” “thermos bottle” or “hot water bottle” engines, could operate for about half a day before having to recharge at a central boiler.

“They couldn’t have combustion down in the tunnel, so that’s why you needed an external steam source,” Mr. Monaghan said.

Traditional steam engines would have spelled disaster for the crews working below ground, according to Mr. LaPrelle.

“You would have eventually been asphyxiated in addition to the fire hazard,” he said.

In its prime, the Santa Fe tunnel complex was one of the most important arteries serving the heart of Dallas. The buildings, described in an ACME Brick advertisement from the period as “one of the outstanding construction projects in the world,” formed one of the Southwest’s largest merchandising centers.

The steel wheels below carried goods into the buildings, with 21 freight elevators lifting merchandise to the upper-level showrooms or first-floor trucking platforms.

The University Club, located in a posh clubhouse atop the Garment Center, provided an elegant crown for the complex and a high-rise playground for the Dallas elite. A sky bridge carried prominent businessmen to the club from the roof of the adjacent Santa Fe Building I.

“I’m sure all manner of things went on up there,” Mr. LaPrelle said.

In later years, studios for WFAA-AM radio, the forerunner to today’s WFAA-TV, would occupy the top of the Garment Center.

In 1942, soldiers became the primary cargo passing through the Santa Fe tunnels. The U.S. government converted a portion of the complex into a recruitment center for the Army. The “thermos bottles” towed thousands of fresh troops away from home, setting them on their way to boot camps across the country.

Today, the scarred floor of the Santa Fe Lofts’ parking garage offers a glimpse of what used to be. Poured concrete has encased the three channels through which as many as 40 railroad cars at a time used to pass.

The two-tone concrete slab and remnants of the loading docks’ metal lip are the only signs of the building’s former use. Mismatched bricks at each end block the former entrance and exit to the rail line.

“When they built the convention center, it severed the connection to the Santa Fe main line,” Mr. Monaghan said.

For the Santa Fe tunnels, as in the case of many historical properties, progress has marked the end of the line.

E-mail briananderson@dallasnews.com

[FoUTASportscaster]

Anyone know the history of the downtown tunnel system? I heard from someone they were actually used as a kind of "subway" back in the late 1800s/early 1900s but instead of subway cars, they had horses and buggies going through them. Anyone know if this is true and how they progressed to what they are?

I know and none of that is true. Aside from the railed tunnels for the Santa Fe, the tunnels as we know we built in the late sixties to mid-80's for exactly what they are now.

[Chevytexas]

Well, in the article referenced those are full-gauge service rail tunnels. Picture a long grade coming in from south of the convention center; the residential neighborhoods once along Lamar and Canton complained as growth of rail spurred a deep cut along which (nonw Griffin Street) the old cemetery and Columbian School had to cope. This was before the combined Union Terminal; Santa Fe had its main passenger terminal (now the Fed Building) and several buildings behind it. To get at these, a railroad loop was propsed (some of it was just removed around the Belo Building) but basically, the cars were delivered on a troop of sidings; then they were shunted by smaller locos (rumors abound that one's still entombed in the unused tunnel beneath the Fed).

On a completely different note, in the late Sixties and seventies when Main Place was being developed, they already had a very large set of service conduits running along Main Street, up under the Main Place site, under the former Republic Bank/Davis Building and on up; these had branches. Those were briefly developed as "shady" alternatives on hot summer days, with dependent retail; it didn't last very long but of course it did create extension ideas such as the commuter loop you can walk clear to Adam's Mark and Plaza of the Americas.

One of the things that killed the tunnel idea was, when they excavated for Main Place, they "recalled" --as old landfill slipped overnight down a forgotten subterannean hill-- it wasn't quite far enough away from the old river:). "Visit the Elm Street Cave" short-lived bumper stickers read.

[xen0blue]

Well, in the article referenced those are full-gauge service rail tunnels. Picture a long grade coming in from south of the convention center; the residential neighborhoods once along Lamar and Canton complained as growth of rail spurred a deep cut along which (nonw Griffin Street) the old cemetery and Columbian School had to cope. This was before the combined Union Terminal; Santa Fe had its main passenger terminal (now the Fed Building) and several buildings behind it. To get at these, a railroad loop was propsed (some of it was just removed around the Belo Building) but basically, the cars were delivered on a troop of sidings; then they were shunted by smaller locos (rumors abound that one's still entombed in the unused tunnel beneath the Fed).

On a completely different note, in the late Sixties and seventies when Main Place was being developed, they already had a very large set of service conduits running along Main Street, up under the Main Place site, under the former Republic Bank/Davis Building and on up; these had branches. Those were briefly developed as "shady" alternatives on hot summer days, with dependent retail; it didn't last very long but of course it did create extension ideas such as the commuter loop you can walk clear to Adam's Mark and Plaza of the Americas.

One of the things that killed the tunnel idea was, when they excavated for Main Place, they "recalled" --as old landfill slipped overnight down a forgotten subterannean hill-- it wasn't quite far enough away from the old river:). "Visit the Elm Street Cave" short-lived bumper stickers read.

can you rephrase this, i'm not sure i'm understanding

[clipper]

There was a tunnel that used to connect the Adolphus Hotel with the Busch Building (Now Kirby). Adlophus Busch owned both and had a tunnel to connect. There was also supposed to be a tunnel from the old Jefferson Hotel (now gone but behind the Lawrence) that ran to the nearby riverbottoms. They used to have card games and drinking in a room there during Prohibition and the tunnel allowed quick escapes. Most of the late 20th century downtown pedestrian tunnels came about after Montreal planner Vincent Ponte was hired by developers of One Main Place, Dallas Centre and others to help plan the future of downtown Dallas. Ponte was the designer for the underground system in Montreal and Dallas sought to copy that. I remember seeing him at meetings here back in the early 1980s. His obit:



Vincent Ponte, 86; Montreal Urban Designer


Elsewhere in the former British colonies, Montreal urban designer Vincent Ponte, 86, died March 12th.

The Montreal Gazette reports that Ponte, having earned a fine arts degree at Harvard in 1949, won a Fulbright scholarship to study architecture in Rome, but gave up architecture after the first term. “Some of the guys in my class were better than I was, and I didn’t want to be a second-rate architect, so I went into city planning instead.”

Ponte went to work for I.M. Pei, whose firm became involved in the design for Place Ville Marie in Montreal. Ponte designed the master plan for what he called a “multi-level, interconnected city,” with pedestrian walkways underground. It was only the first of several projects that transformed downtown Montreal. In 1970 Time Magazine dubbed him the Multi-level man, for his visionary separation of pedestrians, commercial vehicles and public transit at different levels.

Born in Boston, an only child in a wealthy Italian family, he is described in the Gazette by Harvard classmate Henry N. Cobb as possessing “exceptionally broad cultural awareness, exceptionally fastidious intellectual standards and exceptionally well-focused professional goals.”

He apparently cut quite a figure in ‘50s Montreal, which is described by the paper tactfully as “not as cosmopolitan” as it is today. “His sleek elegance combined with a certain sinister air, generated by the dark glasses he invariably wears, suggests that he is either a smooth playboy or a rather chilling Mafioso,” wrote the Montreal Star’s Lou Seligson. Need we add that he never married?

[FoUTASportscaster]

Well, in the article referenced those are full-gauge service rail tunnels. Picture a long grade coming in from south of the convention center; the residential neighborhoods once along Lamar and Canton complained as growth of rail spurred a deep cut along which (nonw Griffin Street) the old cemetery and Columbian School had to cope. This was before the combined Union Terminal; Santa Fe had its main passenger terminal (now the Fed Building) and several buildings behind it. To get at these, a railroad loop was propsed (some of it was just removed around the Belo Building) but basically, the cars were delivered on a troop of sidings; then they were shunted by smaller locos (rumors abound that one's still entombed in the unused tunnel beneath the Fed).

Not exactly true. The Santa Fe federal building was built in 1924. Union Station was built in 1916. The previous building to occupy the Commerce lot was the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroads depot.