Village Life in Old Greenwich

The roots of Old Greenwich run deep from a tiny and close community at the turn of the twentieth century to the vibrant town center that exists today. In 1989, OHP volunteer Marian Phillips interviewed Daniel Catanzaro, a longtime resident of Old Greenwich who currently resides in Riverside. Our thanks to Elizaveta McCauley, a sophomore at Greenwich High School, for her contributions to this blog.

Daniel Catanzaro was born on October 8, 1926, in Old Greenwich. His parents were Mary Catanzaro, a nurse, and Nicholas Catanzaro, Old Greenwich’s shoemaker and a central figure in the community. Daniel’s recollections take us back to earlier days.

 “My family settled here around 1910. But Dad was commuting here, walking from Stamford to Old Greenwich. At that time the trolley ride was five cents, and it was too expensive. That was a luxury. So, we go back to right around the 1900s, when Old Greenwich was really a great town to live in. Old Greenwich was a crowded little town from, say, June 1 to September 1. Then on September 1 all the summer people moved out.”

 Life in Old Greenwich was nothing short of carefree and merry. The close, friendly bond between neighbors and families was perfect for young Catanzaro, who enjoyed being able to go out and about with his friends at just about any time. “I remember playing basketball any hour of the night down at the Old Greenwich School and then walking home ten, eleven o’clock at night. You’d never meet a soul, and you never had a fear of anyone doing anything to you, because you’d just run into somebody’s house and they’d walk you home. Old Greenwich was the safest place I could ever think of for a youngster to grow up in.”

 Taking care of Binney Park, Catanzaro notes, was a great part of his summer. “That’s where we all got our spending money. We’d go down there and pull weeds out, and that’s why Binney Park always looked so beautiful . . . Ed Sullivan used to ride by when he was a columnist with the New York Daily News, and he’d always write about the beauty of Binney Park.”

 As an older child, Catanzaro picked up and delivered shoes to and from his father. “The Shorehame Club had a lot of prominent people there, show people…I was one of the few that would actually go down there; I used to deliver repaired shoes or pick them up and bring them to my dad. I couldn’t remember many other people going down there. There were a few homes, but not many.”

 Daniel Catanzaro also delivered some items other than shoes. “One of the bad things that happened was during World War II. Lake’s Drug Store handled all the Western Union. Anyone that was killed in the service, the telegram would come into Lake’s and we would have to deliver them. If no one was home, the majority of times we’d bring them back and try and find someone who was associated with the family.”

 Catanzaro shared his memories of certain other deliveries from Lake’s Drug Store after Prohibition ended in 1933. “We had liquor down in the cellar. Sunday was our big day. In those days you packed ice cream in a quart container. Everybody used to fight to work for Lake’s on Sunday because you went to deliver a quart of liquor in a quart ice cream container. Whose ever house you delivered it to, you were always good for a nickel or dime tip, so there was always a waiting line to work in Lake’s on Sunday. You were not allowed, like you’re not now allowed, to sell liquor on Sundays. But our commuters would forget on Saturday. They’d call on Sunday, and we’d deliver it in a quart ice cream container.”

 The closeness of the Old Greenwich community extended to the canine portion of the neighborhood—that is, Sound Beach Fire Department’s beloved firehouse dog, Spot. A proud, dignified-looking Dalmatian, he was a common sight to see around the firehouse. Spot accompanied his fellow firefighters as they responded to fires and he would wear his collar—decorated with the emblem of the Fire Department. Unfortunately, Spot passed away in 1949.

 “When that dog died, it was like the most important person in Old Greenwich passed away.  He was buried in a casket and a full funeral ceremony, right in front of the Old Greenwich firehouse. That’s where Spot was buried. I’ve never forgotten that. There was an awful lot of broken hearts when Spot finally left us. They had a formal funeral for him, and everyone in Old Greenwich had tears coming down their eyes.”

 The Oral History Project interview of Daniel Catanzaro, and the book by the same name, Village Life in Old Greenwich, are available for purchase through the OHP office at the Greenwich Library. The OHP is sponsored by the Friends of the Greenwich Library. Visit the OHP website at glohistory.org. Mary A. Jacobson serves as the OHP blog editor.

As we know, the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 were postponed for the first time in history, for a reason other than war, due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The Opening Ceremony of Tokyo 2020 is scheduled for July 23, 2021.

Greenwich laid claim to its own Olympian, Helen Meany Gravis, who gold-medaled in diving almost a century ago, at the Olympic Games Amsterdam 1928. Over the course of two Oral History Project interviews by Esther H. Smith in 1982 and 1983, the journey of Helen Meany Gravis was revealed.

Josephine Meany with Helen

The Meanys lived in a house on Steamboat Road, with its own little beach. Helen’s recollections of Greenwich are more of water than of land. “I learned to swim before I could walk,” she recalls. Across the road was the Indian Harbor Yacht Club, where young Helen also swam. Neither of these provided a true learning environment for the future Olympian, but they would suffice. She remembers winning her first meet when she was thirteen. By then, her father, recognizing her potential, had begun taking her to A.A.U. (Amateur Athletic Union) meets.

William Meany, Helen's father

Helen competed in swimming because she had no place to develop technique in diving, her true interest. She learned, however, by practicing off the dock, on top of a coalhouse, at Commodore Benedict’s home, across the inlet from their beach. Her father, more coaxing than coaching, would encourage her to take the plunge from his place in the waters below. She apparently would dive from anything he could find, high diving platforms being in short supply in the area.

Eventually, her father rigged a platform for her on the side of the yacht club. It was a makeshift float with a ten-foot board from which she could dive. Swimming in those waters was later stopped, being deemed too dangerous. Her practice sessions, as she describes them, were nothing short of perilous, with her climbing up to the board at the top, while below the float wobbled unpredictably as boats passed, coming and going out of the harbor, very near her landing mark.

“I guess if he told me to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge,” she says of her father, “I would have done it.” This is how this future Olympic gold medalist in the women’s three-meter springboard diving competition got her start.

Brothers and Sisters (minus one sister). Helen
is sixth from left.

All the Meany children were swimmers. And there were a lot of them, eleven to be exact, counting Helen, the eldest. Ms. Gravis explains that because her father liked to swim so much, it was natural for the children to become swimmers, too. She remembers “having to pick up the little ones as soon as they could walk or they’d just run right to the water and right up to practically over their heads.” She also remembers that if, in the summer, her siblings missed the boat to Island Beach, they would simply dive off the dock at Indian Harbor and swim to the island.

It was all just fun and games until, at a meet in Rye, New York, Helen Meany saw Alice Lord Landon (who later became an Olympic diver) dive from the ten-meter platform. That is when young Helen knew she wanted to be a platform diver. But the path from her childhood water exploits in Greenwich to the Olympics was not an easy one, since there were few or no diving facilities nearby. She remembers commuting from Greenwich to Manhattan Beach, on the far end of Brooklyn, to practice.

Helen Meany with Martha Norelius,
Amsterdam, 1928

Helen Meany
at Manhattan Beach

Later, as a college student at Wellesley, where there was no swimming pool, she had to decide whether to continue her studies or to make the 1924 Olympic team. After having been eliminated in the 1920 games in the first round, Helen chose to try again and left college before graduating. She placed fifth in the ten-meter platform competition in Paris, 1924, and went on to win the gold in Amsterdam in the three-meter event in 1928.

One wonders how she did it, given the amount of training and coaching that goes into competing in today’s games. “I learned most of my dives from a thirty-four-foot platform, and if you don’t hit the water just right, you can get hurt. . . . So, you just have to try it and try to correct it yourself,” she explains. And here’s the amazing thing: “I didn’t have a diving coach,” she adds.

Now there’s a champion for the record books.

Helen Meany Gravis died at her home in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, July 21, 1991, at the age of eighty-six.

Helen Meany Gravis in front of the
former Meany home on Old Church Road,
photographed by Karl Gleeson for the
1982–1983 Oral History Project interview 

This blog, written by OHP volunteer Jean Moore, was derived from the Oral History Project book, “From Greenwich to the Olympics: Helen Meany Gravis.” It is available for purchase at the Greenwich Library Oral History Project office. Visit the OHP web site at glohistory.org.

 

Cos Cob Park

by Anne W. Semmes

These days the ability to walk outside, inhale fresh sea air, and view spectacular waterfront scenery is treasured more than ever. A special gem in Greenwich which enables us to enjoy these experiences is the Cos Cob Park. In this blog, adapted from a 1989 Oral History Project interview of Gertrude O’Donnell Riska, we explore the history of this site, originally the Cos Cob Power Plant, and the contributions of Riska’s father, Lewis Grant O’Donnell, who played an instrumental role in that history.

It is hard to believe that the scenic Cos Cob Park of today was once the site of the Cos Cob Power Plant, which opened in 1906 The plant was considered an engineering achievement in its day for its use of high-voltage alternating current for railroad electrification, powering trains from Long Island to New Haven. One hundred and fifty men, working round-the-clock, staffed it.

Lewis Grant O’Donnell was employed at the Cos Cob Power Plant from its inception in 1906 and was promoted to Chief Electrical Engineer in 1923, a position he held until his retirement in 1940. His daughter, Gertrude O’Donnell Riska, provided many interesting details of that 34-year period in her father’s life. For him, “It was a twenty-four-hour job, whether he was there or at home.”

Riska’s descriptions of the power plant paint a vivid picture. It was built four stories down into bedrock, with six-foot thick support pillars and walls of two-foot thick reinforced concrete. The floor was four feet in depth. The turbine room was five to six stories high, with six to eight turbines, each the size of a house sitting in a row. The plant used coal-fired steam turbines. “The minute you stepped inside the plant,” Riska said, “you were engulfed in heat and noise.”

The plant was not a stranger to accidents, and after several, O’Donnell decided on a unique way to motivate his workers to be more careful. He painted a mural of a racetrack, six feet long and three feet high, and hung it above the workers’ timeclock. Each of the racehorses on the mural was moveable from the start line to the finish. According to Riska, “Each department was represented by a different racehorse, and they advanced or retreated according to their careless accidents for the month,,.The winning department got awards.” A poem above the mural read:

“Our racehorse Safety who is fast on his feet

Can beat old Carelessness whenever they meet

So give him your support—obey all the rules

By taking no chances when working with tools.”

Competition among all the departments was so intense, according to Riska, that no more accidents occurred at the plant for the duration of her dad’s tenure there.

In addition to administering to his workers’ safety, O’Donnell was concerned about their job security. During the Great Depression, he was informed that twenty of his workers needed to be laid off. O’Donnell asked his men if they were willing to take a pay cut so none would lose their jobs. Those with seniority felt that the last ones hired should be the ones fired. As Riska tells it, her father had a different strategy in mind. The next day he announced, “I have a hat in my hand which contains slips of paper with each man’s name on it. The first twenty names pulled out are the men that will be laid off.” As none of the workers wanted to chance that outcome, they all agreed to the pay cut. O’Donnell viewed his workers as family and cared deeply about the welfare of each of them.

Other events which confronted O’Donnell included the fierce Hurricane of 1938. During that storm, the tide rose so quickly and forcefully that it short-circuited the plant and flooded the lower floors. O’Donnell did not leave the plant for a week until the trains were running again. During World War II, the power station was guarded by FBI agents as there was concern that, if it were bombed, there would be no train movement in or out of New England.

O’Donnell retired as chief electrical engineer in 1940. The power station was decommissioned in 1987 and demolished in 2001. Eventually, in 2015, a nine-acre park on Cos Cob Harbor, in the making for decades, was ready to be open to the public with its walking trails, playgrounds, turf field, and picnic area. Over 150 shade and ornamental trees, 192 evergreens, and 3,400 shrubs and perennials were planted to beautify it. In September 2016, a remembrance ceremony was held at the new 9/11 memorial placed in the park.

When you visit Cos Cob Park, remember that what is now a beautiful site was once the place where trains were powered across New England. Also, think of Lewis Grant O’Donnell, a man dedicated to his job and community and to the wellbeing and safety of all those around him.

The interview of Gertrude O’Donnell Riska, “Chief of the Power Plant,” was conducted in 1989 by Sallie Walter Williams. Its transcript may be read at Greenwich Library and is available for purchase at the Oral History Project office. Mary Jacobson serves as OHP blog editor. The Oral History Project is sponsored by the Friends of the Greenwich Library. Visit the OHP website at glohistory.org