Walter H. Gahagan

Walter H. Gahagan (ca. 1869-1931) was an engineer and general contractor who owned a construction business based in Brooklyn, New York, and a shipyard in Arverne, Queens. Among other projects, his firm worked on the Lackawanna Cut-Off, an immense railroad project in northwestern New Jersey.

Born in Ohio, Gahagan married Lillian Rose Mussen, a schoolteacher who had grown up in Wisconsin. In 1897, they moved to Brooklyn and soon had twin boys, Frederick and William. In the summer of 1900, the family moved temporarily to Boonton, New Jersey, where Gahagan's company was building a reservoir. Their daughter, Helen, later an actress and politician, was born on November 20, just before the family moved back to Brooklyn. In 1902, another daughter, Lillian, was born, and the family moved to a large brownstone house at 231 Lincoln Place in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood. In 1910, their last child, Walter Jr., was born. In 1914, Gahagan bought a vacation home in Fairlee, Vermont, and the family thereafter spent parts of each summer there. In 1931, the year Gahagan died, the family was living at 17 Prospect Park West.

Helen Gahagan, later Helen Gahagan Douglas, became an actress and a pioneering politician who served as a three-term U.S. Representative from California. In 1950, she lost the race for U.S. Senate to Richard Nixon.

Walter Jr. Gahagan Jr. (1910-1993) graduated from Princeton University in 1932 and Columbia University law school in 1935, competed in discus and exhibition football at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, then took over the family business, which subsequently helped build the launching pad for the Apollo space missions and Kennedy and Newark airports.

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