Kip's Castle, is a estate (8 acres in Verona, in Montclair) on the ridge of First Mountain, on the border of Montclair and

Verona Verona ( ; ; or ) is a city on the Adige, River Adige in Veneto, Italy, with 255,131 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region, and is the largest city Comune, municipality in the region and in Northeast Italy, nor ...

townships. It contains a mansion that replicates a

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

Norman castle, and a two-story carriage house. Originally built as a private residence, current plans for the estate include housing offices for various administrative functions for Essex County. However, the Castle is planned to evolve into a premiere cultural resource center, supporting and promoting arts and culture throughout the region. Meeting space will be available for conservancies, community groups, and non-profit organizations. A calendar of ongoing educational programming will be developed, and museum space will be created to showcase the history of the Essex County Park System. A twelve-member Advisory Board has been formed to provide recommendations about not only how to maintain and restore the estate, but also to develop ideas as to how this property can grow into a cultural asset for the community.

History

Kip's Castle, originally known as "Kypsburg," was constructed over a three-year period in the early 1900s by Frederic Ellsworth Kip and his wife, Charlotte Bishop Williams Kip. Frederic was a wealthy

textile Textile is an Hyponymy and hypernymy, umbrella term that includes various Fiber, fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, Staple (textiles)#Filament fiber, filaments, Thread (yarn), threads, and different types of #Fabric, fabric. ...

inventor and

industrialist A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who is a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or ser ...

who also published several books related to United States

tariff A tariff or import tax is a duty (tax), duty imposed by a national Government, government, customs territory, or supranational union on imports of goods and is paid by the importer. Exceptionally, an export tax may be levied on exports of goods ...

laws. Charlotte is credited for the design of the "Kypsburg" building and grounds, cultivating an octagonal rose garden in the southwest corner of the property. After Charlotte's death in 1926, the estate was sold and went through several owners, including Indian guru

Osho Rajneesh (born Chandra Mohan Jain; 11 December 193119 January 1990), also known as Acharya Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and later as Osho (), was an Indian godman, philosopher, mystic and founder of the Rajneesh movement. He was viewed ...

in the 1980s, serving as a monastery. The building and grounds fell into a state of

dilapidation Dilapidation is a term meaning a destructive event to a building, but more particularly used in the plural in English law for # the waste committed by the incumbent of an ecclesiastical living # the disrepair for which a leasehold estate, tenan ...

until 1985 when the law firm of Schwartz, Tobia & Stanziale purchased the property. Through 2005 a considerable amount of work was done to restore the Castle to its original grandeur. In the early 2000s, The law firm wanted to develop

townhouses A townhouse, townhome, town house, or town home, is a type of terraced housing. A modern townhouse is often one with a small footprint on multiple floors. In a different British usage, the term originally referred to any type of city residenc ...

on the property, however, found itself in various legal complications and lawsuits with Verona, and in 2006, the property was placed on the market. As a result of grants from the NJ Green Acres Program and the Essex County Recreation and Open Space Trust Fund, the

County of Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...

purchased Kip's Castle in March 2007. The property is now part of the historic Essex County Park System. Offices for the County Division of Cultural and Historic Affairs, the Essex County Recreation and Open Space Committee and Essex County Park Foundation will be located in the castle, which is also a meeting site for the twelve-member Kip's Castle Park Advisory Board appointed by the County Executive to provide guidance about the maintenance, restoration, activities, and growth of the facility as another asset for the Essex community. According to the county brochure, over time, Kip's Castle Park will become the County's premiere cultural resource center, supporting and promoting arts and culture throughout the region. Meeting space will be available for

community groups Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other or share some common problem come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest. Unlike those who promote more-consensual community buil ...

, and non-profit organizations. A calendar of ongoing educational programming will be developed, and museum space will be created to showcase the history of the Essex County Park System.

Cranetown Triangulation Site

Kip's Castle is location of the former Cranetown Triangulation Site, one of the first

triangulation In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to the point from known points. Applications In surveying Specifically in surveying, triangulation involves only angle m ...

stations established in 1817 by

Ferdinand Hassler Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler (October 6, 1770 – November 20, 1843) was a Swiss-American surveyor who is considered the forefather of both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Institute of Standards and Techno ...

for the U.S. Survey of the Coast and was used to map

New York Harbor New York Harbor is a bay that covers all of the Upper Bay. It is at the mouth of the Hudson River near the East River tidal estuary on the East Coast of the United States. New York Harbor is generally synonymous with Upper New York Bay, ...

. A search by personnel of the New Jersey Geodetic Control Survey and the

National Geodetic Survey The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) is a List of federal agencies in the United States, United States federal agency based in Washington, D.C. that defines and manages a national geographic coordinate system, coordinate system, providing the fou ...

in 1984 to locate Hassler's surveying mark at Cranetown (former name for Montclair) was unsuccessful, as the station was determined to be under Kip's Castle and the rock outcropping that it had been set on might have been cut away when the house was constructed. The Cranetown Triangulation Site was designated as a

National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark __NOTOC__ The following is a list of Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks as designated by the American Society of Civil Engineers since it began the program in 1964. The designation is granted to projects, structures, and sites in the United Stat ...

by the

American Society of Civil Engineers The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) is a tax-exempt professional body founded in 1852 to represent members of the civil engineering profession worldwide. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, it is the oldest national engineering soci ...

in 1986.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kip's Castle Park, New Jersey County parks in New Jersey Verona, New Jersey Montclair, New Jersey Parks in Essex County, New Jersey Watchung Mountains 2007 establishments in New Jersey