Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/88



''Dr. T. Kennard Thomson, whose description of his project of a "Really Greater New York" is published herewith, is considered an authority of note on pneumatic caissons. He has designed and built pneumatic caissons for important bridges over many of the great rivers of the country, in addition to having been retained as a consulting engineer in the construction of over twenty New York skyscrapers. During his experience he has underpinned buildings as high as eighteen stories, putting in new foundations with the slightest possible settlement, although sometimes the new foundations were sixty feet under the old. Dr. Thomson was one of the board of five consulting engineers in charge of the New York Barge Canal in 1914-15, and is also the man who conceived the project of building a new dam in the Whirlpool Rapids, near Niagara Falls, which we described in our November issue.''—.



T first glance, a project to reclaim fifty square miles of land from New York Bay, to add one hundred miles of new waterfront for docks, to fill in the East River, and to prepare New York for a population of twenty million, seems somewhat stupendous, does it not?

One hundred years ago Gouverneur Morris, Simeon De Witt and John Rutherford spent four years laying out New York, and went on record as saying that "the country north of One Hundred and Twenty-first Street would never be covered with houses for centuries to come." Now apartment houses extend to Yonkers, to White Plains and to New Rochelle. New York's overflow has made of Brooklyn a great city. New subways are constantly being built, yet are inadequate when they are completed. Twenty-five years ago New Yorkers felt sure that their water-front would be sufficient for their purposes for many years. Today engineers are searching for some method to cut the Gordian knot of New York's harbor congestion problems.

It is hard to realize the enormous strides of the past century, and still more difficult to comprehend the needs of the future.

Now I propose to add, by a series of engineering projects, fifty square miles to Greater New York's area and port foothold. At the same time this will mean an addition of one hundred miles of new water-front. New York's City Hall would become the center of a really greater New York, having a radius of twenty-five miles, and within that circle there would be ample room for a population of twenty-five millions, the entire project to be carried out within a few years. Many have said "It can't be done."' The majority of engineers, however, have acknowledged the possibility, and I have received hundreds of letters of encouragement.

Although this would mean an