This is one of the few centrally located city parks and also overlooks the Norwalk River. Bellow the Wall Street Bridge the River widens as it flows out to the Norwalk Harbor, so Freese Park, named after Mayor Irving Freese who governed Norwalk between 1947 and 1957.
The story of Mayor Freese is an interesting one, he first won election as a member of the socialist party and then switched to become an Independent in 1951. He was notably mayor during the 1955 Flood, which destroyed buildings the were once on the site of the current park. Another trivia bit is that he defeated Stanley Stroffolio, the Republican candidate in 1951, who later became a legislator for Norwalk first as a State Rep then as a Senator, but all he got named after himself was a bridge that currently connects East Norwalk and Veterans Park to SoNo.
