Clifford Milburn Holland

Clifford Milburn Holland (1883 to 1924) was an American civil engineer known for overseeing the construction of subway and automobile tunnels in New York City. He served as the first chief engineer of the Hudson River Vehicular Tunnel project connecting Manhattan and Jersey City, where he devised ventilation systems capable of safely clearing vehicle exhaust fumes from a tunnel running deep under a busy river, a problem that had never been solved at that scale before. The completed tunnel, which came to bear his name as the Holland Tunnel, opened in 1924 as the first underwater vehicular tunnel in the United States and the fifth in the world, and its ventilation approach influenced the design of major underwater road tunnels that followed. Holland died of a heart attack on October 27, 1924, just one day before the tunnel's two bores were finally connected under the river and about two weeks before its official public opening, and the project was renamed in his honor after his death. He was educated at Harvard University, earning degrees in both arts and civil engineering by 1906.