Walter Hamer Gahagan (February 14, 1864 – December 18, 1930)[1] was an American civil engineer and general contractor who owned a construction business based in Brooklyn, New York, and a shipyard in Arverne, Queens.
[3] Born in Troy, Ohio,[4] Gahagan married Lillian Rose Mussen, a schoolteacher who had grown up in Wisconsin.
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.
[2] Walter Gahagan Jr. (1910-1993) graduated from Princeton University in 1932 and Columbia University law school in 1935,[7] competed in discus and exhibition football[8] at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, then inherited the family business, which subsequently helped build the launching pad for the Apollo space missions and Kennedy and Newark airports.
[13] Among the other work done by the Arverne shipyard was the construction of a 10,000-ton floating wooden drydock for $800,000 for the Emergency Fleet Corporation.