Kurt Landsberger Collection

The bulk of the collection relates to the Save the Mountain organization which Landsberger founded in 1981. Save the Mountain was established by local citizens to fight to save Kips Castle on First Mountain in Verona and Montclair, NJ. Initially, they were unsuccessful in convincing county or municipality to obtain the property for public use. As Essex County moved to sell its former institutions (Overbrook Hospital, Essex Mountain Sanatorium, and the Jail Annex) in Cedar Grove, Verona, and North Caldwell, the group’s focus turned to the Hilltop property on Second Mountain. Included in the collection are minutes, correspondence, notes, membership lists, clippings and press releases, flyers, and reports. In support of the efforts to preserve some of the last open space in Essex County, as well as touching on some of his other eclectic interests, Landsberger wrote a column published in several local newspapers called “Hilltop Views”. And once a portion of the Hilltop was saved as parkland, he and others created the Hilltop Conservancy. Some related materials are included in the collection.

Born in Prague in 1920, Landsberger immigrated to the United States in 1939. In 1946, he and his wife Anny founded Bel-Art Products a global manufacturer of laboratory equipment. The collection includes one box of materials unrelated to Save the Mountain.