Constructing a Dynasty

John Gallin & Son a Family Affair since 1886

Also Inside:
2008 Top Specialty Contractors

Family Ties
John Gallin & Son: Building New York for 122 Years

Walking through the company’s sprawling offices, which take up the ninth floor of 102 Madison Ave., the family’s pride in their legacy is evident on nearly every wall, which are adorned with portraits of each of the five Gallins – starting with the original John Gallin – who have helmed the firm over the years.

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“Unfortunately, being a construction company, early on, the interest in history wasn’t great,” Varian says as he gives a tour of the offices. “What photographs we do have, we put up on the walls.”

The original John Gallin had been a mason in Ireland before deciding to move to the U.S. in the 1880s where he started John Gallin & Son – he had only one son at the time – originally as a masonry company in Manhattan. John ran the company until he died at a fairly young age in 1912, leaving the day-to-day operations to that son, William, who was considered more a businessman than a tradesman at the time he took over the firm.

“We know that he’d studied at Pratt [Institute] to learn blueprint reading and things like that, but there’s no sense that he had any kind of degree or architectural background beyond that,” Varian says. “But he basically ran the company as a one-man shop for over 40 years.”

(From left) Michael Gallin, Mark Varian, Christopher Gallin, and Thomas Gallin are the fourth generation of the family to run John Gallin & Son Construction, Inc., which has been family-owned and operated in New York City since 1886. (Photo by Michael Falco.)

During World War II William’s oldest son, also named William, joined the firm and assumed control after his father died about 10 years later. His younger brother, Tom, came aboard shortly thereafter and the pair ran the company together until William’s retirement in 1977, then Tom took over the day to day operations with his nephew, John. Tom – the father of Michael, Christopher, and Robert – retired in 1986, followed by John in 2000. At that time Varian – whose mother was a daughter of the first William Gallin – was named president.

Under the direction of the first William Gallin, the firm began dabbling in interiors work once new construction began drying up. One of the early interior-only jobs was a project in Greenwich Village converting the carriage houses of Washington Mews into apartments, which would soon become the type of work John Gallin & Son needed to stay afloat.

Varian (left), whose mother was a Gallin and the daughter of William L.H. Gallin, was named president of the company in 2000 after the retirement of John C. Gallin, who had run the company since 1988. (Photo by Michael Falco.)

“There wasn’t much being built in the 1930s, especially after the Empire State Building. And [the Washington Mews project] was one that helped keep them going at the time. That was all interiors work. They started doing more and more of that based on the economy of the city at that time. By the time World War II was over, it was primarily all we did.”

After the war, the firm joined the growing movement in the city toward general contracting and began running larger jobs on its own. Before long it had carved out a niche for itself as an interiors GC doing commercial work in Manhattan. Along the way, the firm also gained some notoriety through several jobs for the Archdiocese of New York. This, in turn, led to some high profile work, including constructing the alter for Pope Paul VI at Yankee Stadium in 1963, and the celebration for Pope Pius XII’s 80th birthday in 1956 at the Polo Grounds.

John Gallin 1886-1912	William L H Gallin 1912-1953	William H J Gallin 1953-1978	Thomas P Gallin 1978-1988	John C Gallin 1988-2000
The Gallin Family

And for many years, specifically during the 1970s, their niche was narrowed down even further as the company became known for their work with banks. A series of jobs for Manhattan Savings Bank, Citibank, Chase Bank and several others no longer in existence pigeonholed the firm for awhile as “the bank people.” It was during that era that Gallins completed some of their most memorable jobs, even while they looked to shed their reputation as a one-dimensional contractor.

Taken in 1900, the image known as the company’s “signature photo” shows a man believed to be the original John Gallin standing outside his original Lower Manhattan shopfront. The boy on the far right is thought to be his son, and future company president, William L.H. Gallin. (Photo courtesy of John Gallin & Son, Inc.)

“It seemed like that was all we did in the 70s,” says Michael. “You could look at just about any bank and it would’ve been our job. At one point we were able to say that we’d built every bank on the concourse at the World Trade Center. And eventually that’s what everyone thought we did all the time.

The bank jobs grew from the company’s relationships with several architecture firms that specialized in bank design, but soon they found themselves having to prove themselves capable of other types of projects.

“It made sense,” Varian says of the company’s bank work. “We were located down in the financial district or very close to it, we had these good working relationships with the architecture firms and, therefore, the banks they’d work for. But I can remember going out trying to drum up new work and having people say to me, ‘Okay, but you guys only do banks …’” Varian laughs. “And I’m thinking, first of all, if that’s the case, what difference does that make? It doesn’t mean we can’t build something else. And second of all, that’s just not true. But it was our claim to fame, so that’s kind of something we had to live with for a while. But it was very lucrative at the same time.”

“You should talk to some of the other people that work for us,” says Michael. “They might have better things to say about us than we do.”

For many years the company’s relationship with the Archdiocese of New York City resulted in such high profile jobs as the construction of the altar for Pope Pius XII’s 80th birthday celebration at the Polo Grounds in 1956. (Photo courtesy of John Gallin & Son, Inc.)

We’re now standing on the 25th floor at 600 Third Avenue where a John Gallin & Son team is working on a buildout for a Japanese IT firm. Michael is kidding, but just barely. He and his brothers have been joking with the project manager and his crew nonstop since arriving on the floor. This is the Gallin way of doing business. Fostering relationships with their employees has been one of the company’s calling cards since the beginning and is one of the chief reasons that they never seem to be hiring – because no one ever seems to want to leave. In fact, just like the Gallins themselves, many on the staff are the third and fourth generations of their own families to work for the company.

“When I was a little kid coming into the office, the Gallins were little kids running around the office, too,” says Walter Zieglar, vice president of estimating and purchasing for the firm, the same position his father held. His grandfather and great-grandfather were both carpenters – also for the Gallins. “They have a straight-forward family work ethic. No one is handed anything. We all had to work our way up from laborer to foreman and on and on. It’s a family atmosphere here and everyone gets that.”

“Nepotism goes a long way here,” Christopher jokes. “But they do stay here because they know we take care of them. It’s the quality of the work environment. We’re not working 20 hours a day. We’re not doing billions of dollars of work every year. They know that we understand that you work to live. You don’t live to work.”

For much of the 1970s, John Gallin & Son was known for their work building banks, like the Manhattan Savings Bank in Chinatown, shown shortly after completion in 1977. (Photo courtesy of John Gallin & Son, Inc.)

That work environment is a byproduct of a business model that has been a bedrock principle of the company since its formation two centuries ago: moderate growth during boom cycles and moderate contraction when there is less work to be had. John Gallin & Son has always subscribed to the theory that you don’t grow more than you can contract, which is a result of slow expansion, careful selection of projects to bid, and, as the family likes to say, “chasing clients, not jobs.” It’s a practice that has allowed them to survive economic recessions and industry downturns without having to cut staff. This allows them to take on more jobs than they might otherwise during slower times.

We’re more particular in terms of how we go after business,” Michael says. “We don’t want to add 50 clients a year. We’d rather add five that we’re going to be able to service and stay with so we’ll have those five forever. Other companies will go all out and shoot for 50. They may get their 50 but by the next year it’s down to three because they didn’t do the job. Meanwhile they’re staffed for 50. So we try to be more selective. We don’t go chasing every job that’s out there. And it’s funny, you have relationships like that and you actually end up getting called more during the down times. There’s so much pressure during those times to get a job done at the number you were told in the time that you were told, that we actually get more work.

While he sifts through scrapbooks in an attempt to find more photographs and pieces of family and business lore, Varian is asked if the company’s business model has made it possible to keep the business family-run for another century. He points out to the main work area which is buzzing with activity as staff members are taking calls, reviewing plans, and calling out to one another from behind their cubicles.

“We’ve already got some fifth-generation out there now,” he says with a smile. “We don’t force anyone into the business, and plenty of members of the family have gone on and done other things.”

He shrugs.

“But we’d be proud to see it go on like this for another 100 years.”