April 10, 1951
The Battery Park Underpass, a vehicular tunnel at the southernmost tip of Manhattan in New York City, was officially opened during a noontime ceremony. This underpass is located near the neighborhoods of Battery Park and South Ferry. It serves as a link between Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive (popularly known as FDR Drive), a controlled-access parkway on the east side of Manhattan; and the West Side Highway (now officially called the Joe DiMaggio Highway), a 5.4-mile (8.7-kilometer)-long section of New York State Route 9A on Manhattan’s west side. This underpass crosses beneath both the public park that is now known as the Battery; and the approach to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel
Construction on the Battery Park Underpass began in 1949. Approximately 250 people turned out for the dedication of this tunnel. Those in attendance included Robert F. Wagner II (1910-1991), who was borough president of Manhattan from 1950 to 1953 and would serve as mayor of New York City between 1954 and 1965. He was accompanied by his wife Susan Edwards Wagner (1909-1964) and their son Robert F. Wagner III (1944-1993). The next day’s edition of the New York Times reported, “Robert F. Wagner, 7-year-old son of Manhattan’s Borough President, cut the red, white and blue ribbons that had been strung across the entrance, and there were speeches by a few officials, including his father, Robert F. Wagner Jr.”
(The attached photo of the Battery Park Underpass was taken in 2024.)
Photo Credit: Famartin (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Famartin) – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licenses at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
For more information on the Battery Park Underpass, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_Park_Underpass
Transportation History 
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