Election-year deadlines forced a breakneck tunnel design pace

Evidence

It was under tremendous pressure to produce results fast. Nineteen thirty-six was a presidential election year and Harold Ickes, whose PWA was financing the tunnel, wanted the President to be able to break ground well before November. “They didn’t want to have $58,000,000 lying idle in an election year,” Singstad says. Assembling an engineering and administrative staff from scratch and producing in a matter of a few months plans for a huge and complicated engineering job—Singstad had to draw more than 125 separate studies before he hit on a feasible plan for the Manhattan entrance—was immensely difficult. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 2588