PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — One of our tunnels is hitting a huge milestone this year. Back in 1924, the Liberty Tunnel officially opened in Pittsburgh, making it 100 years old.
In the early 1900s, before folks could travel through Mt. Washington to get where they were going, they had to go up, over and around. There needed to be a more efficient way to get people from places like Dormont and Mt. Lebanon to Downtown and back, especially now that folks were on the move in this new contraption known as an automobile.
“The Liberty Tunnel was not the first, but one of the first that really was planned as a tunnel that was designed for automobiles,” said Leslie Przybylek, the senior curator at Heinz History Center. “By 1908, 1909, it’s clear that cars are kind of the wave of the future. And in fact, it was at that time that you start to see conversations with the different South Hills civic groups saying, ‘we need to look at a new option’ and they begin to lobby for a tunnel.”