February 25, 1908
The first tube of the McAdoo rapid transit tunnel system allowing electric trolleys to travel between Hoboken, New Jersey, and Manhattan was formally opened amid great fanfare. This structure made history as the first transportation tunnel beneath a major river. “It is the first tunnel for passenger traffic under the Hudson River and forecasts the doom of Hudson ferries,” reported Popular Mechanics magazine. “The opening was celebrated by officials of the two states, the nation, and thousands of commuters, who no longer have their coming and going dependent upon fog, ice, and ferry delays.”
A large crowd showed up for the launch of the first trolley (consisting of nine rail cars) at Manhattan’s Nineteenth Street Station. President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), using a telegraph connection from his White House desk in Washington, D.C., pressed a button that turned on the power inside the tube at 3:40 p.m. and set the trolley on its inaugural three-mile (4.8-kilometer) trek to Hoboken.
The trolley arrived at Hoboken’s Lackawanna Station at 3:51. This station was decorated as part of the big celebration, with a crowd of about 10,000 gathered in a nearby square and thousands more looking out windows in buildings in that neighborhood.
William Gibbs McAdoo (1863-1941), a prominent lawyer who later served as both U.S. secretary of the treasury and director general of railroads under his father-in-law President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), was the person for whom the new public transportation network was at least initially named. It was McAdoo who formed and led the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company that ultimately completed construction of that network’s tunnel.
The attached photo depicts McAdoo speaking at the Hoboken-based celebration of the tunnel’s first tube. The other principal speakers for this occasion were John Franklin Fort (1852-1920), who had become governor of New Jersey the previous month and would remain in the position until 1911; and Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948), who was governor of New York from 1907 to 1910 (and later served as both U.S. secretary of state and chief justice of the Supreme Court).
The day following these festivities, the New York Times reported on the tunnel’s formal debut and its long-term significance in rather effusive terms. “The opening marked the realization of a dream which has occupied the minds of engineers for nearly half a century,” asserted this article. “It is conceded to be one of the greatest engineering feats that has ever been accomplished, greater perhaps than the Panama Canal will be when completed, considering the obstacles which had to be overcome.”
Photo Credit: Public Domain
For more information on the development of the McAdoo rapid transit system tunnels (more widely known today as the Uptown Hudson Tubes), please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uptown_Hudson_Tubes
Transportation History 
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