Sandhog

Sandhogs in New York City's East Side Access

Sandhog is the slang term given to urban miners, construction workers who work underground on a variety of excavation projects in New York City.^[1] Generally these projects involve tunneling, caisson excavation, road building, or some other type of underground construction or mining projects. The miners work with a variety of equipment from tunnel boring machines to explosives to remove material for the project they are building. The term is an American colloquialism.

Starting with their first job in 1872, the Brooklyn Bridge, the "hogs" have built a large part of the New York City infrastructure including the subway tunnels and sewers, Water Tunnels No. 1 and No. 2 as well as the currently under construction Water Tunnel No. 3, the Lincoln, Holland, Queens-Midtown, and Brooklyn-Battery tunnels. In addition, they worked on the foundations for most of the bridges and many of the skyscrapers in the city. Many of these workers are Irish or Irish American and West Indian.

Sandhogging is often a tradition and is passed down through generations of families; since mining projects span decades, it is not uncommon to find multi-generations of families to work together on the same job.^[2]

Appearances in media

In the October 1997 issue of Esquire magazine, a series of photographs by David Allee, with a text accompaniment by Thomas Kelly, document the life and work of sandhogs. In 2006 at Grand Central Terminal in New York City there was a large-scale photo and video installation about the sandhogs, The Sandhog Project, created by artist Gina LeVay.
Thomas Kelly's 1997 novel about sandhogs, Payback, was reissued in 2008 as Sandhogs (ISBN 978-1593762360) by Soft Skull Press.^[3]
David Grann's 2003 article about sandhogs, City of Water, appeared in the September 1 issue of The New Yorker^[4] and was republished in his collection The Devil and Sherlock Holmes. It has been optioned for a movie.
On September 7, 2008, The History Channel began a series on the sandhogs.^[5]
The CSI: NY episode "A Man a Mile" deals with the death of a sandhog during construction of Water Tunnel No. 3.
The Cold Case episode "Sandhogs" (Season 4, Episode 3) deals with the death of a Sandhog in 1948.
A Public Broadcasting System (PBS) sponsored documentary show American Experience 2014 episode "The Rise and Fall of Penn Station" details the work done by the sandhogs in the creation of the rail tunnels connecting New York and New Jersey. ^[6]
The podcast 99% Invisible released an episode on sandhogs in March 2015. ^[7]
Chuck Wendig's urban fantasy novel, The Blue Blazes (ISBN 9780857663351). The protagonist is a former sandhog, and one of the central elements of the plot is Water Tunnel No. 3, a sandhog construction project.

Literature

Gina LeVay (fotos): Sandhogs, powerHouse Books, New York 2009, ISBN 978-1-57687-523-0.
Colum McCann's "This Side of Brightness," Picador, New York 1998, ISBN 0-312-42197-4.
Jimmy Breslin "Table Money," Tickner & Fields, New York 1986, ISBN 9780899193120.

Movies

In the 1996 film Daylight, directed by Rob Cohen and starring Sylvester Stallone, there are references to "Sandhogs" as well as detailed history on how these men lived under the pressures of building the Holland Tunnel.
Edward Burns, in Sidewalks of New York (2001 film), mentions that one of his grandfathers was a sandhog who died from emphysema.
In 2007 Edward Burns also narrated the film The Greatest Tunnel Ever Built for The History Channel.

References

↑ "The Men Who Make New York Work". NYC Sandhogs Local 147. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
↑ Fisher, Ian (November 28, 1993). "Tunneling Into a World of Danger; Fatal Accident Puts Spotlight on Sandhogs' Perilous Job". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
↑ "softskull.com".
↑ "City of Water" (abstract), The New Yorker, September 1, 2003.
↑ "Sandhogs - 800 feet below NYC streets". A&E Television Networks. Archived from the original on February 24, 2009. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
↑ Penn Station The American Experience
↑ 99% Invisible Episode 158: Sandhogs

External links

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