Christmas at Kip's Castle 2023 | Verona and Montclair, New Jersey

Kip’s Castle Park

According to the Essex Parks website:

Kip’s Castle is a magnificent 9,000-square-foot mansion that replicates a medieval Norman castle. The estate spans eleven acres of land on the ridge of First Mountain, resting in both Montclair and Verona townships, and provides spectacular views of New York City. The exteriors of both the castle and the 6,000-square-foot, two-story carriage house are constructed of local trap rock trimmed with sandstone. The interior of the castle consists of thirty distinguished rooms of varying shapes which include vaulted ceilings and six ornate fireplaces.

There is a wonderful video from NJ.com about this place:

The place has an interesting history.

The Beginnings

According to the Essex County Parks site:

Kip’s Castle, originally known as “Kypsburg,” was constructed over a three-year period from 1902 through 1905 by Frederic Ellsworth Kip and his wife, Charlotte Bishop Williams Kip. Frederic was a wealthy textile inventor and industrialist who also published several books related to United States tariff laws. Charlotte is credited for the design of the “Kypsburg” building and grounds, cultivating a renowned octagonal rose garden in the southwest corner of the property. After Charlotte’s passing in 1926, the estate was sold and went through several owners.

Kip’s Castle was also known as the Cranetown Triangulation Site. Montclair was originally called Cranetown.

According to Wikipedia:

Kip’s Castle is the location of the former Cranetown Triangulation Site, one of the first triangulation stations established in 1817 by Ferdinand Hassler for the U.S. Survey of the Coast and was used to map New York Harbor.

A search by personnel of the New Jersey Geodetic Control Survey and the National Geodetic Survey 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 by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1986.

The Indian Guru And Sex Cult

One of the owners during this time was an Indian guru with a troubled past!

According to Only In Your State:

In 1980, the home was sold to Indian guru, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh… That’s when things got weird. The castle was converted to a compound, home to a cult promoting sexual liberation. They even took out ads in local papers promoting sex as a form of therapy. According to locals, their strange rituals startled neighbors. The cult was based out of the castle for nearly 5 years, during which time they sold off the property’s stunning stained glass windows.

Montclair is a very liberal town and normally does not question what people are doing, but the rumors of a sex cult were deeply troubling to area residents.

According to Weird NJ:

Rumors of a “Sex and Drugs” cult soon began to fly around Montclair, where followers began pouring in from London and Bombay, grabbing up any available living quarters they could find in order to be nearer to their spiritual master. One Montclair resident described the reaction of the community as “panic stricken” in a New York Times article about the Rajneeshees, which ran under the headline “Guru’s Cult in Castle Troubles Montclair.” “We are very concerned,” another neighbor told the Times, “about our property values, our children, and about this becoming an international headquarters for a free-sex cult.”