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Filling in part of the river was also proposed in 1867 by engineer James E. Serrell, later a city surveyor, but with emphasis on solving the problem of Hell Gate. Serrell proposed filling in Hell Gate and building a "New East River" through Queens with an extension to [[Westchester County, New York|Westchester County]].<ref name=unbound127/><ref>[[New York Public Library]] (1901) [https://books.google.com/books?id=MpZJAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22James+E.+Serrell%22+%22East+River%22&pg=PA109 ''Bulletin of the New York Public Library''] p.109 Quote: "Plan and description proposing to re model the city of New York and its vicinity By making a New East River filling up Hell Gate and annexing Brooklyn also extending into Westchester County By James E Serrell ... 1869"</ref><ref>[[New York Public Library]] (1913) [https://archive.org/details/selectedlistref00librgoog/page/n11 <!-- pg=7 quote="James E. Serrell" "East River". --> ''Selected List of References Bearing on the City Plan of New York''] p.7 Quote: "Suggestion for removal of rocks in Hell Gate to lessen currents Also to change shape of the boundary on the easterly and westerly side of New York Eleven reasons presented for furtherance of plan. ... A canal 200 ft extending from Long Island sound to 150th street to transport people"</ref> Serrell's plan – which he publicized with maps, essay and lectures as well as presentations to the city, state and federal governments – would have filled in the river from 14th Street to 125th Street. The New East River through Queens would be about three times the average width of the existing one at an even {{convert|3600|ft|m}} throughout, and would run as straight as an arrow for {{convert|5|mi|spell=in}}. The new land, and the portions of Queens which would become part of Manhattan, adding {{convert|2500|acre|ha}}, would be covered with an extension of the existing street grid of Manhattan.<ref>Koeppel (2015), pp.202–04</ref>
Variations on Serrell's plan would be floated over the years. A pseudonymous "Terra Firma" brought up filling in the East River again in the ''Evening Post'' and ''[[Scientific American]]'' in 1904, and [[Thomas Edison|Thomas Alva Edison]] took it up in 1906. Then Thomas Kennard Thompson, a bridge and railway engineer, proposed in 1913 to fill in the river from Hell Gate to the tip of Manhattan and, as Serrell had suggested, make a new canalized East River, only this time from [[Flushing Bay]] to [[Jamaica Bay]]. He would also expand Brooklyn into the Upper Harbor, put up a dam from Brooklyn to [[Staten Island]], and make extensive landfill in the Lower Bay. At around the same time, in the 1920s,
===Clearing Hell Gate===
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