Update: The Tucker Tunnel was filled in and a new street was opened in 2013.
I realized that the American realist paper Joe Jones, the subject of an upcoming special exhibit organized by the Saint Louis Art Museum, painted the Tucker, or 12th Street, Tunnel back in 1932. See the painting here, and in the upcoming exhibition. The tunnel should be completely demolished this next year, at which point it will pass into history. See the tunnel in photographs here and here.
Wow! That painting is great. I really wish I had the opportunity to travel into St. Louis on that route. Pretty sad the tunnel won't have a chance to see another use (and that I never got a chance to explore it past the northern wall of the Globe building. Any idea how far it kept going?
It made it at least to Washington, where the train station was supposed to have been. However, friends who tramped through the mud and pitch darkness said it might have gone for a little while longer. We'll be able to tell by how far the road reconstruction goes; when they stop, that's where the tunnel stops.You're right, I would have loved to have seen the tunnel become a Metrolink route.