Here’s a question for New Haven history buffs: Who was John Galvin? And a related question for geography buffs: Where is Galvin Park?
The answers were forthcoming Saturday on the corner of First Street and Greenwich Avenue in the Hill, as, (standing, left to right) Bill, Mary, and John, Jr., the children of John Galvin were joined by Alderman Jorge Perez to dedicate a park in their father’s honor.
Galvin was a seven-time alderman from the Hill, political colleague of Mayor Richard C. Lee, a parks commissioner, a beloved local businessman with a sense of neighborhood, and president of the Board of Aldermen in 1954 at the time of his death at age 43.
In a ceremony on sunny Saturday morning attended by three generations of Galvin’s family (here, great granddaughter Jayden Farnsworth and her mom, son Bill Galvin, who is proudly displaying one of his dad’s campaign buttons, and granddaughter Becca), he was remembered as someone whose key values included doing the right thing and having a sense of neighborhood. The park now could celebrate that sense of neighborhood in colorful style, with its red and blue curving slides, kid climbing apparatus, and thick rubberized safety carpet.
The park’s renovation came about, according to Alderman Perez, when local parents began advocating for better facilities. They were in touch with the parks department and with Dominic Giulietti (pictured below enjoying himself on the slide with several Galvin heirs) of the City Point Neighborhood Association. “When the work was commenced, and completed a number of months ago, we weren’t sure what to officially name it, and Dominic did some research. It was clear that John Galvin was the right choice but we had to educate ourselves and the community about who he was. That’s important to retain the history as you make new things, which they are built upon.”
And, by his history, Bill and Mary told a relaxed crowd of some 50 celebrants, a tale of immigration was told that is repeating today. “The Galvins, Irish immigrants, came to New Haven,” said Mary Galvin, who went on to become the first woman state prosecutor in Connecticut and now dean of the National College of District Attorneys in Columbia, S.C., “and they set up in the fruit business, which was then centered where the Coliseum is, or was. He just loved the neighborhood, helped to found the Hill Triangle Association, with its sports clubs, and took pleasure in helping people.”
“And hasn’t it always been this way,” added Alderman Perez, who’s lived near the park for 30 years. Some real old-timers said the site was the Greenwich Street School, grades one to four, before that. “The Italians, the Irish, the names change, but the story remains the same,” Perez said.
When another speaker, a nephew, Tom McLaughlan (not pictured), recalled his uncle’s helping people, sometimes in the form of fixing people’s parking tickets in that era when such things were done, daughter Mary, the prosecuting attorney stepped forward to object. “Our father didn’t fix people’s tickets, he paid them on their behalf.”
“No,” the nephew countered, “he fixed them. “And when that practice was … er … ended, people still continued to bring John their tickets.”
“OK,” replied the counselor, “the great thing was that my father accepted these tickets and, the people thought he was still ‘fixing’ them, but he was paying for them out of his own pocket.”
“The point is,” said Bill Galvin, “that John’s and our story is the immigrant story, of people helping each other and the city being open enough to give a helping hand, and that is happening again today, as it should.”
The park might well be serving as a family memorial to a well-loved patriarch, and as an important history lesson, but to the kids on this delightful day, it was also, first and foremost, just a lot of fun.
The man responsible for that is David Moser, the one-man landscape architecture department of New Haven city government. Although he is deployed in City Plan, almost all of Moser’s work is for the parks department, where over the last ten years he has presided over, among other projects, renovations of playgrounds and parks, of which Galvin Park is the latest.
The feature, of which he seemed most pleased — certainly the kids were — is the “splash pad.” It’s a sloped square with tall multi-colored poles, some spouting as well as sprouting aquatic sun flowers, showering down water at different levels of spray and volume. “They’re much simpler to maintain than swimming pools,” Moser said. The way it works, as demonstrated by Galvin great granddaughter Jayden (pictured below), is you press that rubberized button at the top of the blue pole, and that sets the water showers going.
“You can alter the flow, the timer, whatever configuration. It’s all amazingly trouble free. Our only problem is with the start button that at times gets vandalized. So we repalce it.”
And was it working on this particular project? “Well, the city moves, you know, slowly, but this went along fine. There are so many competing requests, you know, but Alderman Perez really led the way in securing the funding. We were able also to put in a few interesting features,” and he pointed to the wrought-iron fence, “like that additional detailing, which is nice. And we’re going to put a formal plaque as well that tells a little of John Galvin’s life and contributions, but it isn’t fabricated yet.”
The city has many other splash pads, Moser said, which are manufactured by a Canadian company, the largest being in Lighthouse Point Park. Moser said there’s another in Edgewood Park, a much older version near the sundial, and newer ones at Kensington Park, one at the Ann Street Park. The newest splash pad is coming to Newhallville at Ivy and Butler Streets, behind Lincoln-Basset School.
Would John Galvin approve of the frolicking in the park named in his honor?
“Oh, this really shows his legacy. The idea that one individual can really make a difference, and that it goes on. I’m sure he’s looking down,” said Mary Galvin, “and smiling.”