Neziah Wright: 
Stamped In History

Anyone who has ever been a stamp collector will instantly recognize the pair shown here: They are the very first two United States postage stamps, and were issued in 1847.

Along the bottom edge of each stamp are the initials R.W.H.&N. The W stands for a man whose mortal remains are spending eternity in Ridgefield, but who probably never lived here — though he had a close attachment to the town.

Neziah Wright was born in 1804 in Grafton, N.H., where his father was a local physician. The family soon moved to Bradford, Vt. 

Little is known about his early life but by the 1820s he was in New York City, working as an engraver. In 1828, he and Freeman Rawdon established an engraving firm that soon grew into Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson, a leading producer of bank notes, bonds, and other finely engraved printing.

On March 3, 1847, a federal act authorized the postmaster general to use postage stamps for the prepayment of postage on letters. Within two weeks Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson had submitted a proposal to design and print those new postage stamps, and they quickly got the contract. 

The result was the 5¢ Benjamin Franklin and 10¢ George Washington issues that went on sale in New York on July 1, 1847. Franklin was the first postmaster general, appointed by the Continental Congress in 1775, and Washington, the first president.

  

Some three million of the five cent stamps were printed and 863,000 ten centers. Back then postal rates were determined both by the weight and the distance that the letters had to travel. Letters going 300 miles or less were 5¢ per half ounce;  over 300 miles were 10¢ per half ounce.  

Wright’s company continued to merge with others, but held majority control when it became the American Bank Note Company in 1858, with Wright as its first treasurer. The company created not only the first stamps, but the first paper money, called “greenbacks,” issued by the federal government in 1862.

 A close inspection of the first greenbacks shows why American Bank Note was considered an expert in producing currency that was difficult to counterfeit. In fact, Neziah Wright had been a co-author of a book,  New Security for Protecting Bank Notes from Alterations & Photographic Counterfeits, published in 1858.

By the 1860s, Wright was considered a leading businessman in New York City. In his 1875 History of Bradford, Vt.,  the Rev. Silas McKeen quaintly describes  Neziah Wright as “a man well-known and highly esteemed in financial and commercial circles, who is said to possess a sufficiency of wealth, acquired by fair and honorable means. The amiable and excellent wife of Mr. N. Wright, deceased some years since, leaving no child but a virtually adopted daughter, Jane [sic], a worthy young lady, who married Mr. Phineas Lowndesbury, of Ridgefield, Ct., a gentleman worthy of such a wife.” (McKeen had some problems with names; the adopted daughter was Jennie, not Jane, and Phineas was Lounsbury, not Lowndesbury.)

      Therein lies the Ridgefield connection. Phineas Lounsbury was born in 1841 on the family’s Ridgefield  farm, The Hickories, in Farmingville.  After the Civil War he was running a shoe factory in New Haven, later in Norwalk, reports Lounsbury historian  Jeremy Main. “Phineas built ties with the New York banking society and sealed them by marrying Jennie Wright, daughter of Neziah Wright, a founder and treasurer of the American Bank Note Co.,” said Main. That wedding occurred in 1867.

Jennie and Phineas lived on Main Street, eventually building Grovelawn, the mansion now used as Ridgefield’s Community Center. When Neziah died in 1879, his will named Phineas Lounsbury as his executor.

Neziah Wright must have liked Phineas Lounsbury and Ridgefield a great deal because both he and his wife — and his sister — are all buried in the Lounsbury section of the Ridgefield Cemetery. His adopted daughter is nearby, with her husband, Phineas. The huge main monument — one of the tallest in Ridgefield — is shared by both the Wrights and Lounsburys.

The company Neziah Wright helped to create in the 1820s is still alive today, called ABCorp, with American Bank Note as a subsidiary. While it still does fine, secure printing, the company has branched out into such fields as “dual-interface (contactless) payment debit and credit cards” and business-to-business distribution services in more than 100 countries. Its headquarters are just down the road, in Stamford, Conn.

Norman Craig: 

‘Stormin’ Norman’

“They used to call him the best-dressed fireman, because he always wore a shirt and a tie,” said Elsie Fossi Craig. 

Her husband Norman, longtime owner of Craig’s Jewelry Store, was an active volunteer fireman for 15 years. When a call came in, he’d have to politely ask customers to leave, lock up the store, and run to the fire station to drive the second truck. 

Born in 1927 in Bronxville, N.Y.,  Norman David Craig grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y., After graduating from high school and moving to Ridgefield in 1946, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps for two years and then began watch-making studies. He entered the jewelry business in 1950, when his mother, Helen Craig, bought the 40-year-old jewelry store of Francis D. Martin, then located near today's Roma Pizzeria. Seventy years later, at around 110, Craig's is the second oldest local retail business in Ridgefield  (only Bissell’s is older). 

In 1951, he and Elsie Fossi – who had been Mr. Martin’s secretary for nine years – were married. While  Craig technically retired in 1983, he continued for many years to help at the store, which was taken over by son William and daughters Karen Petrini and Lori Corsak. 

Craig had the rare distinction of having been a member of both the Democratic and Republican Town Committees. He started out a Republican, and served on that town committee and on the Board of Tax Review. A Democrat during the administration of his brother-in-law, First Selectman Louis J. Fossi, he served on various town study committees, was a delegate to the 1978 Democratic State Convention and was almost elected state representative in 1981. 

Later in life, he returned to the Republican fold, and in 1998, won a seat on the Board of Finance. 

His community service was extraordinary. He was an incorporator of the Visiting Nurse Association and the Boys and Girls Club, trustee of the Family Y, an assistant chief and president of the Ridgefield Volunteer Fire Department, director of the old Teen Center, Boy Scout scoutmaster, president and founding member of the Kiwanis Club, a founder with Clarence Korker of the Chamber of Commerce, and a sponsor of many Little League and other youth sports teams. 

He was a member of the American Legion and helped plan countless Memorial Day parades — and invariably marched in them, sometimes with the Legion and sometimes with the Knights of Columbus.

A devout Catholic, Craig served on the St. Mary Parish advisory board, its fund-raising committee and as an acolyte, and was a grand knight of the Marquette Council Knights of Columbus. He was also a supporter of Immaculate High School in Danbury, where he served on the original fund-raising committee that helped build the school, was president of the parents club and was a recipient of the lifetime achievement award.

For relaxation, Craig loved golf — and colorful golfing attire. He once remarked, “The Ridgefield Golf Course, I think, is one of the best things this town has done, as far as athletics is concerned for adults and kids — it gets a lot of play.”

All this activity helped earn him the Chamber of Commerce Public Service Award in 1986 and Kiwanis Citizen of the Year Award in 1990.

It also earned him the nickname, Stormin’ Norman.

William H. Casey: 

Civic Businessman

For half of the 20th Century, Bill Casey was a leader in  the business, civic and social life of  Ridgefield. A soft-spoken man who often wore a smile, Casey founded a company that still bears his name and is still led by his family 70 years later.

Born in Manhattan in 1917,  William Henry Casey grew up on Long Island and graduated from Lehigh University, where he was president of the Class of 1939. The same year he graduated, he married Valerie Dyer, a New York City native who was raised in Montreal, Canada. They were wed at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Casey worked for several oil companies before deciding to start his own business. In 1947 they moved to Ridgefield, living at first in the Bluebird Apartments on West Lane.

He began a fuel oil business in 1949  (just three years after native sons Frank and Fred Montanari started the town’s other still-thriving family-owned oil business, Montanari Fuel).

Four years later the Casey family moved to an 18th Century Main Street homestead that has

served as their house but also their office for nearly 70 years. Over those years Casey Fuel has expanded with the acquisition of the heating oil businesses of Ridgefield Supply, Outpost Supply and Venus Oil, added a propane service, and rebranded itself as Casey Energy. The company was led by his son, Michael, starting in 1976, and today is in the hands of grandson, Shane.

 In 1961, Bill Casey opened a real estate end of the business and was long active in the realty community, serving in 1967 as president of the Ridgefield Board of Realtors. In the early 1960s,  Casey also owned an Esso gasoline station and paint store on Danbury Road, now the quarters of Marty Motors.

 Casey was always active in the civic and community life of Ridgefield. A longtime member of the Board of Finance, he also served on the Board of Tax Review.  In 1971 he tossed his hat in the ring for the job of first selectman, but then bowed out in favor of Joseph J. McLinden, who won the job.

He was chairman of the Republican Town Committee, and worked on dozens of campaigns over the years. He served as a director of the Community Center and a trustee of Danbury Hospital. 

And he held the distinction of being the longest, continuous, still-resident member of the Ridgefield Lions Club. Casey joined the club on Nov. 1, 1948, and had served as the club president a few years later. All presidents had a special project to accomplish and his in the early 1950s was something that seemed more out of the inner city than suburbs: Building showers on the front lawn of the Community Center for the town’s children. 

“This was before air conditioning and since there was no place to swim then, we put in 10 showers,” he told a 1996 gathering honoring his 50th anniversary with the Lions. “The kids were there on all the hot summer days.” 

Soon after he and other Lions helped Francis D. Martin create Great Pond’s swimming beach — today’s Martin Park.

An avid golfer, Casey was one of the longest-term members of the Silver Spring Country

Club. There, he was a founder of the infamous Poison Ivy League, a group of local golfers that included such prominent businessmen and attorneys as Judge John E. Dowling, Alex Santini, Judge Joseph H. Donnelly, Edward Hyde, and Judge Reed F. Shields.

He was also interested in his family’s Irish roots — both his and Valerie’s ancestors came from Ireland. In 1997, 18 members of the Casey clan — representing four generations —  traveled together to Ireland for a 10-day trip that included visits to many ancestral sites of both the Casey and Dyer families.  

Bill Casey died in 2002 at his home on Main Street at the age of 84. He left behind one of a handful of Ridgefield businesses that have involved multiple generations of a family and that survive and thrive today. Others besides Montanari Fuel include Ridgefield Supply, Ridgefield Hardware, Neumann Real Estate, and Ancona’s Wines and Liquors.

Joseph H. Donnelly: 

The First Lawyer

Joe Donnelly made quite a name for himself in Ridgefield. In fact, he made several names for himself.

Ridgefield’s first full-time practicing attorney and one of its most astute real estate entrepreneurs had a career that lasted more than 60 years and included countless hours of public service, both with Ridgefield government and in numerous community organizations.

“He was really good to an awful lot of people, and helped an awful lot of people — behind the scenes,” said Paul S. McNamara, who had been his partner for many years. “He was reserved and preferred to remain anonymous.”

Even so, his name does appear on three town roads.

Joseph Henry Donnelly was born in 1906 in Bridgeport, got his bachelor’s and law degrees

from Columbia University, and went to work for his brother’s  prestigious law firm in Bridgeport.

In July 1931, when he was only 24 years old, he decided to strike out on his own and arrived in Ridgefield in “an old Pontiac,” recalled former town historian Richard E. Venus. He lived at Ashland Cottage, the Victorian house just south of the St. Stephen’s campus where once another attorney had lived. While Samuel “Lawyer Sam” Keeler was a full-time attorney, he had practiced only in New York City; the newcomer, the town’s only local lawyer, was the first to live and practice full-time in Ridgefield.

After his marriage to Ellen Gavin, whom he had met at Columbia, Donnelly moved to a house on West Mountain Road. Later he bought a farm on Wilton Road West, part of which he eventually developed into a subdivision served by Donnelly Drive — one of three roads in town using his name.

Soon after his arrival Judge Donnelly became active in his new community. He was named the town attorney in 1935, serving until 1948 and again for a year in the late 1960s.

From 1941 to 1949 he was judge of probate, an elective office that was the source of the judicial title that stuck over the years — many people referred to him as “Judge Donnelly” long after he stopped being a probate judge.

For many years, he was involved in the drive to bring zoning to Ridgefield and was in the forefront of the campaign that led to zoning’s adoption in 1946. The ordinance he championed was written by his brother, John V. Donnelly, who was city attorney of Bridgeport and whose law firm broke in many of the state’s top trial lawyers, not to mention his own brother.

Joe Donnelly served in many other government posts including on a charter revision commission and the Police Commission. He was Ridgefield’s state representative from 1939 to 1941, and a prosecutor in the town’s Trial Justice Court in the 1940s. He was active in the Republican party, serving for a while as town chairman. He was a frequent moderator of town meetings.

Real estate was one of Donnelly’s long-standing interests and over the years he amassed a lot

of property. Though he had sold off some by the time of his death, he was still one of the town’s top 10 taxpayers — most of the other nine were corporations.

Among his earliest purchases was the commercial block belonging to Judge George G. Scott, whom he succeeded as probate judge. The block, which he acquired in 1943, consists of stores and offices between the Masonic Hall and the old Bissell building, which today includes Craig’s Jewelers, Shine Hair Salon and Rodier Flowers. He bought the land behind this in the mid-1950s and built the “Donnelly Shopping Center” that now houses the Ridgefield Thrift Shop, Ancona’s Wines and Liquors, Ridgefield Music, Colby’s, and other shops but had originally been home to Woolworth’s and First National.

He was involved in the development of Ridgefield Commerce Park on Danbury Road, and several subdivisions. Among these were the 1950s Scodon development in Ridgebury that includes Scodon Drive (he was the “don” while Ridgefield Savings Bank president Carlton Scofield was the “sco”).

With jeweler Francis D. Martin and real estate and insurance broker Arthur J. Carnall, he developed the road that’s named from the first three letters of the threesome’s surnames: Marcardon Avenue. Martin, also a large investor in real estate, was once Donnelly’s landlord — the judge’s first office was over today’s Planet Pizza in the Tudoresque building then owned by Martin.

Later, Judge Donnelly acquired Gov.  Phineas Lounsbury’s one-time home on Governor Street and converted it to offices, which included his own firm of Donnelly, McNamara and Gustafson (now practicing from the Ridgefield Bank building on Danbury Road).

Through his involvement in real estate, both in representing clients and in his own dealings,

he became perhaps the foremost authority on property in town, and some said his records were better than town hall’s. He maintained thousands of property records, first on three-by-five cards and later on microfilm. As historian Dick Venus observed, “he could search a title without leaving his office.”

“He was one of the best real estate lawyers,” said attorney John E. Dowling, who’d also been a probate judge. “He could tell you the deal on a closing many years after. Joe was a detail man.”

Donnelly’s business interests included the Cadillac dealership on Danbury Road, which he and Irving B. Conklin Sr. operated in the early 1950s; it later became Kellogg-Thiess. He had also served on the boards of directors of several banks. 

“He spent an awful lot of time on local organizations, helping the town,” said McNamara. Among the many civic groups for which he volunteered were the Salvation Army, the District Nursing Association, the Ridgefield and Fairlawn Cemetery Associations, and the Knights of Columbus. He was an honorary life member of the Ridgefield Volunteer Fire Department. During World War II he was on the Ration Board and the Selective Service Committee.

He belonged to St. Mary’s Parish, but was ecumenical in his assistance.  “He helped a lot of churches of all denominations,” said Dowling. “He did a lot of work for them and I don’t think he ever charged them for it.”

An avid golfer, Donnelly was a charter member of the Silver Spring Country Club.

“We used to play golf together,” Dowling recalled. “It used to be the lawyers against the bankers. Joe and I would play Scofield and (Frank) Warner.” Other Ridgefield businessmen who’d often be among his golfing partners or competitors included Abe Morelli, Reed F. Shields, Arthur Carnall, Fred Orrico, and Charles Coles.

In 1980 Donnelly was honored on his 50-year membership in the Connecticut Bar. He died in 1992 at the age of 85.

One of Joe Donnelly’s favorite legal cases  — and one he enjoyed recollecting — was his service as administrator of the estate of an 85-year-old Bethel woman named Helen Dow Peck. In 1955, Mrs. Peck bequeathed $180,000 ($1.7 million in 2018) to someone named John Gale Forbes, whom she’d “met” many years earlier via a Ouija board she had purchased at a toy store in 1919.

The bizarre case drew widespread publicity, especially after nine nieces and nephews appealed the bequest on the grounds that Mrs. Peck “did not have the right use of her reason when she executed her will,” giving a small fortune to a “spirit” she’d never seen in person.

The appeal went all the way to the state Supreme Court of Errors, and the relatives, represented by Dowling, won. 

The case “was on the Connecticut Bar exam at least once,” Dowling said with a smile.

Alan Meltzer: 

A Generous Man of Music

Alan Meltzer, who died on Halloween 2011 at the age of 67, left a rather unusual will: He bequeathed $1 million to his chauffeur, and another half million to the doorman at the Manhattan building in which he lived.

Meltzer, who had a home on Old Branchville Road in the 1980s and 1990s, was a wealthy music entrepreneur whom The New York Post described as “the colorful former head of the New

York-based Wind-Up Records and a celebrity high-stakes poker player.”

Wind-Up, which has produced recordings for Creed, Evanescence, Seether, and many other artists, is one of the largest independently owned record labels in the world; the company says it’s been responsible for establishing many multi-platinum and diamond artists. (Creed’s three CDs had by 2003 sold 30 million copies.)

But when he and his wife, Diana, moved to Ridgefield, Alan Meltzer was involved in the retail side of music instead of production. He’d owned Titus Oaks Records, a small music chain in Long Island and, after moving here, opened Rainbow Records at 88 Danbury Road.

In 1985 he founded CD One Stop, a wholesaler of pre-recorded music. The business, which operated out his house here, was called the first of its kind to distribute only compact discs. Later merged into CDNow, it eventually became part of Amazon.com.

Meltzer was also a serious poker player, and frequently appeared on televised poker programs.

Tragedy struck in 1991. The Meltzers’ only child, Michael, a 20-year-old honors student at Syracuse University and a 1989 Ridgefield High School graduate, was killed in an auto accident on Danbury Road. In Michael’s memory, the couple established a scholarship for music and art students graduating from RHS that has given away tens of thousands of dollars in the years since.

Not long afterward, the Meltzers moved to Manhattan and acquired a small record label, Grass, soon turning it into Wind-Up Records. He ran the business while Diana sought out the musicians — Newsweek called her “the chief talent scout, the woman with the golden ears.”

Eventually, the two divorced. Meanwhile, Alan struck up friendships with his doorman and chauffeur —  The Post called them “two faithful workers who gave him a shoulder to cry on.”

Both were surprised at the bequests.

“I appreciate it,” the doorman said in a 2012 Post story reprinted around the world. “He was a generous guy. He was a really good friend of mine, and I was a good friend of his. It’s a surprise. Peace and rest to him.”

“I don’t know what to do exactly with the money, but one thing I know for sure, every year I’m going to bring the guy some flowers at his grave,” said the chauffeur, the father of five. 

That grave is in Ridgefield: Alan is buried next to his son Michael in Ridgebury Cemetery. 

R. Gordon McGovern: 

A Kind, Corporate Leader

In the 1980s or 90s, if you were shopping at Ancona’s Market, you might have spotted a tall, well-dressed gentleman, fiddling with the neatness of the bread or soup can displays in the grocery aisles. It was probably Gordon McGovern, who had once swept floors at Pepperidge Farm and wound up its president, and then CEO of parent Campbell Soup.

Richard Gordon Gordon was born in Norristown, Pa., in 1926. An avid traveler all his life, he hitch-hiked across the United States as a high school student.  He graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University in 1948 and received his MBA from Harvard in 1950. He served as a Navy radar officer during the Korean War  

Starting as a management trainee sweeping floors for Pepperidge Farm, McGovern worked his way up to president of the company in 1968. He became chief executive officer of the parent company, Campbell Soup, in 1980, and retired in December 1989. 

At both companies McGovern gained national recognition for the introduction of innovative products, including the 100% natural soup line. 

He was always close to the customer. “He would shop for groceries in towns he visited, often discussing products and displays with the store manager,” a family member recalled. And he’d make sure Campbell/Pepperidge Farm items were perfectly presented. Even long after he retired, he could be spotted straightening Pepperidge Farm bread and neatening Campbell cans.

Mr. McGovern was proud of his record of never having closed a production plant at Pepperidge Farm and Campbell Soup (after he left, many were shut down).

Campbell has its headquarters in Camden, N.J., one of New Jersey’s most depressed cities, and during his period as CEO, McGovern’s was considered a “godsend,” said The Philadelphia News in 1989. “Gordon has been a tremendous asset to this city,” said Camden Mayor Randy Primas. "If we wanted to look at any one individual responsible for the development of the waterfront, it would be McGovern. He's one of the city’s unsung heroes."

A modest man, the CEO drove a yellow Volkswagen “beetle” for his corporate commute. 

He was a strong believer in education and gave generously to universities, libraries and schools and served on the boards of Wheaton College and the Wooster School in Danbury.  In Ridgefield, the Cain’s Hill Road resident contributed to such projects as building the lighted basketball courts behind the old high school on East Ridge. He and his wife, Julia, were major contributors to the Ridgefield Library, and helped pay for the building of the Dayton Program Room that the library used for more than 20 years. 

He died  in 2014 at his retirement home in South Kingstown, R.I. He was 87 years old.

Francis D. Martin and his wife, Doris.

Francis D. Martin: 

“Mr. Ridgefield”

“Known affectionately as Mr. Ridgefield,” his Ridgefield Press obituary said, Francis D. Martin “was a jeweler, optician, banker, traveler, church and community leader, figure skater, and a philanthropist who aided many organizations and causes.” 

Mr. Martin was probably also the best known Ridgefield resident of the 20th Century. When he and his wife, Doris, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1966, more than 1,500 townspeople attended the open house at their gymnasium on the former Ridgefield School property on North Salem Road. 

“My first hobby is helping my fellow man, my church, and my community,” he once told The   Press. 

Born in 1893 in West Park, N.Y., “Marty” came to Ridgefield at the age of three. His father was for 50 years superintendent of Gov. Phineas C. Lounsbury’s Main Street estate — including what’s we now the Community Center — and his family lived in a house on the south side of Governor Street, where the Wells Fargo bank parking lot is now.

Mr. Martin attended school on Bailey Avenue — “where there were no toilets and no running water, just a pail with a dipper from which everyone drank and no one got typhoid fever,” he once wrote.

He began working at the age of six, carrying mail to the Vinton School for girls on East Ridge (now the Ridgefield police station). At 12, he was caddying at 15 cents a round. A year later, he got the job of night operator for the telephone company at $3.50 a week — five cents an hour — working from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. He said he'd then go home, eat breakfast and catch the 7:35 train for Norwalk High School (Ridgefield didn't have a high school then).

At Norwalk he was captain of the basketball and baseball teams. At basketball, he said, he was high scorer in the state in his final year on a team that had a 21-1 record and won the state championship. The same year, he reported, he pitched Norwalk High’s baseball squad to a 19-1 record, and had the highest batting average, .421.

He later played regional baseball and basketball and, in 1916, pitched three no-hitters for the Woosters of Danbury. That September, he said, he tried out for the Chicago White Sox, was offered a contract, but refused because he was about to be married to Doris Godfrey, his wife of more than 60 years.

Mr. Martin attended the Philadelphia College of Horology and Optics. In 1911, at age 17, he opened Ridgefield’s first clock and optician store in the Donnelly building on Main Street. “For the first 23 years I never failed being at my place of business later than 4:30 in the morning,” he said. “And we kept the stores in Ridgefield open every night in those days.”

He became active in the community, helping found Ridgefield's first Boy Scout troop in 1912, raising funds for the county YMCA,  establishing  the Promoter’s Club, and serving as first president of the Lions Club. He was a 27-year member of the Board of Finance, a state commissioner of opticians, chairman of the Boys’ Club,  chairman of the Red Cross during World War II,  president of the First National Bank for many years, and a trustee of Danbury Hospital. 

With A.J. Carnall, he worked on the acquisition of  the Lounsbury estate to become Veterans Park and the Community Center, and even tried to convince the United Nations to establish its headquarters in town.

For many years, Mr. Martin headed the Branchville Fresh Air Camp, which hosted some 100 children a year through the Herald Tribune Fresh Air Fund. The camp was on the site of today’s Branchville School.

A leader in the Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church, he was chairman of the church’s Board of Trustees for 35 years and led the church’s move from the center of town to its present location. He gave the church more than a half million dollars. 

One of his favorite activities was figure skating, and for many years in February, he would plow snow off the ice at Lake Mamanasco and invite the entire town to a skating party there. Often, more than 1,000 people would attend.

In 1934, he was seriously injured in a skating accident. While he was recuperating,  Mr. Martin decided to undertake “five projects to benefit Ridgefield and my fellow man.” He completed four and never revealed what the fifth was.

“The Depression was on, and business was very bad at that time,” he wrote of his first plan. “Foremost in my thought was that in 30 years, wealth would be gone and Ridgefield needed some kind of industry, but no factories, as we are a beautiful residential community.”’

So he began buying properties near the village, particularly along Grove Street and Old Quarry Road. Some people thought he was crazy, he said. One teacher even told his son’s class, “Wise people buy high and dry land; foolish people along railroads, town dumps, and filter beds.”

Eventually, however, the land was zoned for light industry and, improved by Mr. Martin, became home to such companies as Schlumberger and Digitech.  

His second project was to upgrade his business into “the finest country jewelry store in America.”  (By the time he sold the store to Helen Craig in 1950, he calculated that he had personally repaired 125,000 watches and 25,000 clocks.)

His third project was the acquisition of many run-down properties including the Tudor-style building where Planet Pizza is today.  Many were fixed up, and shacks out back torn down. 

In 1941 he bought the old Ridgefield Boys School on North Salem Road “with the sole purpose in my mind of keeping out of Ridgefield a very undesirable group of people who were after it,” he said without further explanation. He eventually decided to make it his home and much of the building was razed to make it more house-sized. (The property was once among the sites considered for the world headquarters of the United Nations, now in Manhattan.)

Around 1950, Mr. Martin purchased the 14 acres at the corner of Danbury and Copps Hill Roads so that “when Ridgefield (was) large enough, we would have a shopping center outside congested areas with parking room for over 1,000 cars.” The spot is now Copps Hill Plaza, built in the early 1970’s.

Mr. Martin’s final project was his favorite. “While still in bed, I laid great plans to have an exceptionally fine swimming place for the people of Ridgefield —a place that would be absolutely clean, well-guarded by the police and lifeguards.”

The land at Great Pond was acquired by Mr. Martin and others. Volunteers created a beach in 1953. Fees high enough only to cover costs of operating the private park were charged.

When the Great Pond Holding Corporation donated the property to the town in 1970, Mr. Martin had only two stipulations. “It is the wish of Francis D. Martin,” the deed says of one, “that this park be continuously self-supporting.” He did not want taxpayers who don’t use the beach to have to pay for it and thus, the town must charge fees for its use.

The only other stipulation was that “said premises will be known as Francis D. Martin Park.”

Francis Martin died in 1982 at the age of 88. His wife, Doris, died five years later.

Benjamin Levy: 

Good Scents

Ridgefielders  who’ve seen or visited Levy Park along the east side of Barrack Hill Road may have wondered just who “Levy” was. The 48-acre refuge recalls a man of not only good sense, but good scents.

Born around 1879 in Rheims, France., Benjamin E. Levy joined Coty, the French cosmetic company, in 1910, and a couple years later, established the American branch of Coty.  In 1934, while founder François Coty was still president, Levy was elected chairman of the board of directors.  He later took over as company president, resigning in 1940.

During his leadership Coty had one of the major pavilions at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, visited by well over a million people.  Coty’s perfume products were shown in the Hall of Perfumes and displays demonstrated the role of decorative arts in cosmetic packaging.

Levy also led another major cosmetic producer, Charles of the Ritz. That company was founded by a Frenchman, Charles Jundt, who in 1919, took over the beauty salon at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in New York, fashioning it after one he had run in Paris. A few years later, he began selling a line of cosmetics to retail outlets. In 1936, Jundt sold his interest to Benjamin Levy and Levy’s nephew, Richard B. Salomon. Salomon ran the company until it was sold to Squibb in 1971. Levy served as chairman of the board.

Levy and his wife, Regine, moved to Ridgefield in 1940, acquiring 80 acres along Barrack Hill Road. Over the years he served as a member of the board of managers of the Ridgefield Boys Club and was on the Board of Incorporators of the Ridgefield Library. The Levys were also “quiet philanthropists,” whose good deeds were largely unpublicized. Among their donations was Renoir’s painting, Woman with A Cat, which they gave the National Gallery of Art in 1950.

Levy died in 1952 at the age of 73; his wife had died five months earlier.  Nephew Richard Salomon inherited the 80-acre estate, selling off the house and surrounding land to another Frenchman,  Jean LeGrand and his wife, Nina; Jean was a Schlumberger-Doll executive. (A few years later the LeGrandes sold much of the land to Peter Lorenzini and Norman Craig who developed Grand View Drive — a perfect pun reflecting the location and the former owner.) 

Some 38 acres were left and in 1968, Salomon decided to give the land to the town of Ridgefield as open space, to be officially known as “The B. E. and Regine Levy Park and Recreational Area and Wildlife Refuge.” Since then, another 10 acres have been added to the park, which today has many trails through meadowland, woods, and wetlands.

 Salomon had a long history as a philanthropist. He was a major benefactor of the New York Public Library, where he was chairman of the Board of Trustees. He was also on the boards of Brown University,  Lincoln Center, WNET Channel 13, and Stamford Hospital. He had lived in Stamford and died there in 1994 at the age of 82. 

Karl F. Landegger: 

The European Yankee

The New York Times once described Karl F. Landegger as “the very model of the urbane and impeccable European businessman…and a tough Yankee trader.” Fortune said: “Hard-driving, sophisticated, and a cool risk-taker, he will obligingly arrange payment and long-term credits, in any one of six different currencies, and spend $300,000 bidding for a paper-mill contract in far away Egypt that he may never get.” 

A mill magnate, Mr. Landegger may also have been the wealthiest man ever to live in Ridgefield. In 1964, Fortune magazine estimated his worth at $34 million, but a year before, Parade magazine put his fortune at $250 million, “making him one of the wealthiest men in America.” 

His wealth was earned through years of hard work and wise investments. A native of Vienna, he was born 1905 and when he was only 25, had saved $5,000 — and borrowed $200,000 — to buy a paper mill in Austria. Fleeing the Nazis in 1938, he went to London where he joined a pulp merchandising firm that sent him to the U.S. in 1940. Four years later he bought Parsons & Whittemore, a pulp, paper and mill equipment merchandiser and later added other companies. By the year 2000, it was the fourth largest producer of paper pulp in the world. 

In the 1950s Mr. Landegger began building paper and pulp mills for developing nations. At one point he had built 14 mills in 10 countries in five years, with 12 more under construction at a total capital investment of a half billion dollars. 

“In 1953 he launched the ‘packaged mill’ concept providing all services for developing and operating pulp and paper plants in developing countries,” says the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame. “This resulted in completion of 60 plants in 28 countries, all based on using local raw materials including a variety of non-wood fibers such as straw, bagasse, reeds, grasses, bamboo, esparto, abaca, etc. as well as various wood species. He encouraged governments and private investors to see the rewards of having their own paper industries in these countries, many of which were unable to import adequate paper to satisfy their needs.”

Under his leadership many new kinds of machinery for making — and recycling — paper were put into use.  

In the early 50s, Mr. Landegger and his family bought Flat Rock House, a 160-acre estate here, which his family still owns. 

Mr. Landegger died in 1976 while at his winter home in the Bahamas, and is buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery. He was 70. Though he was never involved in local organizations, Mr. Landegger and his family have quietly made many contributions to the community. In addition, the Karl F. Landegger Program in International Business Diplomacy at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service was endowed to train future leaders in international business, public policy, and business-government relations.

S.D. Keeler: 

The Major Merchant

If he were around today, S.D. Keeler might have become a modern Sam Walton. Or at least a Carl Bennett.

Walton founded Walmart, Bennett started Caldor (remember Caldor?), and Keeler at one time had three retail stores in various parts of town plus other retail operations. The Ridgefield Press observed in 1950, “His business enterprises began with a small grocery stand in the village and mushroomed into perhaps the biggest single business of its character in the town’s history.”

During one year early in the 20th Century, his local enterprises had a gross income of more than a half million dollars — close to $15 million today. 

Not bad for a merchant in a small town of around 3,100 people.

Samuel Dauchy Keeler was born in Ridgefield in 1852, and grew up in town. He was known as S.D. while Samuel Keeler, a prominent attorney, was often referred to as “Lawyer Sam” — not to his face — to avoid confusion between the two.

His career began in 1884 when he opened a small grocery stand in the village. It grew into the first up-to-date market in town, open nightly till 9 and until 11 Saturdays. 

The store was located in the space today occupied by Deborah Ann’s Sweet Shoppe. In the sidewalk out front, he had embedded into the concrete his initials, S.D.K., in brass letters that were around two by two feet in surface size — one set facing each direction. They may  still be there today, covered over by today’s brick surface.

In the 1890s, the store was selling not only groceries, but a wide variety of  “general merchandise” that included cement, drain tile, bricks, paint, lime, and other building materials.

In 1901, Keeler built the first cold-storage warehouse in town – a predecessor of the modern freezer. Outside the village he eventually owned the Titicus Store at North Salem and Mapleshade

Roads, and the Corner Store by the Fountain.

“Expressing admiration for Mr. Keeler’s aggressive business tactics,” one businessman once “declared that his delivery system was so good that he would even take a yeast cake over the dirt roads to a home up on West Mountain if anyone were bold enough to ask,”  The Press reported in 1950. 

One of Keeler’s big sources of income was his grain and feed elevator on lower Bailey Avenue, much of which still stands. Town Historian Richard E. Venus described its operation in a 1983 “Dick’s Dispatch” column in The Ridgefield Press.

“At one time when farming played an important role in the daily life of Ridgefield, farmers brought in their wheat, oats, rye, corn, and barley. These grains were taken up in the elevator to the top floor where they were processed and mixed.

“Different ingredients were required in the diets prepared for horses, cows, sheep, hogs and chickens. The proper amount of each of the grains for the diet of each of the farm animals was mixed and placed in large bins on the top floor. From each bin, a chute was extended to the ground floor.

Through these shoots the mixed feed would filter to be bagged and sold back to the farmers who had previously sold some of the ingredients to Mr. Keeler.

“This whole operation was of great importance to Ridgefield’s economy and provided employment for a number of people.”

By 1921, Keeler had sold all his businesses. His village market was went to Walter Stewart Company of New Canaan, but soon became Perry’s Market and then Gristedes. (The building was purchased in 2000 by the Rabin family of next-door Ridgefield Hardware.) 

Samuel D. Keeler died at his Branchville Road home in 1926 at the age of 73. Strangely, The Press at that time gave him only a terse, three-paragraph obituary, on an inside page. Typically, such a prominent person would have been on the front page, with a much longer tribute. 

Around that time the newspaper was owned by Lawyer Sam. One wonders whether there was some sort of animosity between Ridgefield’s two prominent Samuel Keelers. 

D. Smith Gage: 

Prosperous and Parsimonious

In the late 19th Century, everyone knew D. Smith Gage, a wealthy Ridgefield businessman. He owned, among other properties, the building at Main Street and Bailey Avenue that caught fire in December 1895,  starting an inferno that destroyed much of the business center of Ridgefield. 

Born in 1844, Gage began his career as a 17-year-old clerk at the Lewis H. Bailey’s “Old Hundred” store (now the Aldrich Museum offices). The store had been founded in 1785 by Lt. Joshua King, and for many years was the principal general store in town. 

Known as what we would today call a workaholic, Gage never took a single day of vacation while clerking at the store from 1861 to 1876.

Gage bought the general store in 1880 and, four years later, moved the business to a new, larger building at Main and Bailey. After that burned down, he rebuilt and continued in business until selling to D. F. Bedient, who’d been his clerk. (The former Bedient building is now the home of Books on the Common and other businesses.)

Over the years he also served as treasurer of the Ridgefield Savings Bank (now Fairfield County Bank), a town assessor, and a member of the Masons.

By the 20th Century, Mr. Gage had gone from a $40-a-year clerk to one of the town’s wealthiest local businessmen, owning much real estate. His wealth was due to both hard work and wise investments. An 1899 biographical sketch of Gage said he had “attained more than the ordinary measure of success in life, and by close application to business and a steady adherence to sound principles of honesty and integrity has placed himself in the ranks of the prosperous merchants of this county.”

In addition, The Ridgefield Press once observed, “he was regarded by villagers as somewhat addicted to parsimony.” So it came as no surprise to many when, on a frigid February day in 1923, he received delivery of a large load of coal at his Prospect Street home, was handed the bill by the driver, and dropped dead on the spot.

James B. Lee Sr. and Sr.: 

Of  Fedoras and Finance

It’s not too often that you find father-and-son leaders in the world of business, especially when their two business worlds are entirely different. But that was the case with James B. Lee Sr. and Jr. Dad was the head of one of the nation’s largest hat manufacturers — at a time when people still wore hats instead of caps. Son was a financial genius whom The New York Times called “a pioneering deal maker and among the most influential Wall Street investment bankers of his era.”

Both had been Ridgefielders, father late in life and son, early. And both died young.

James Bainbridge Lee Sr. was born in Danbury in 1916, a son of Frank H. Lee who, in 1886 at the age of 19, founded a hat factory in that city. Long called the “Hat City” of America, Danbury at the time had 30 companies that were turning out 5 million hats a year. F. H. Lee Hat Company soon grew to be the biggest operation. By 1917, Lee was producing 12,000 hats a day. According to one hat historian, Lee “did a huge business in low-end hats but they were quite capable of producing high-grade hats as well. Usually the wider the ribbon on a Lee, the higher the grade of the hat.” 

James graduated from Canterbury School in New Milford, then Georgetown University, and served in the Army during World War II — entering as a private and winding up a captain. After the war, he became secretary of the company and then in 1950, president. But in 1960, when classic felt hats had become less popular, he sold Lee to Stetson, famed for its “western” style hats. Lee Hat had had as many as 1,500 employees in its heyday, but by the time of the sale, only 220 people worked there.

Four years later, Stetson shut down the huge Danbury factory near where the state Motor Vehicles Department is today.

The Lee family was also heavily involved in communications. In 1927 Frank had founded

the Danbury Times, which eight years later merged with the Evening News to form the  News-Times. The paper remained in the Lee family until 1960 when it was sold to Ottaway Newspapers. 

James, who lived for many years on Wilton Road West, seemed more interested in the broadcasting side of media. He was president of and the main stockholder in the Berkshire Broadcasting  Company, which was then principally WLAD Radio but is now a half dozen area AM and FM stations, including the former WREF — now WAXB — in Ridgefield.

An accomplished golfer, Lee was a longtime member of the Ridgewood Country Club in Danbury, was its golf champion several times, and also placed near the top in state amateur tournaments.

In 1964, when he was only 47 years old,  James died of heart failure. (His brother, Frank H. Lee Jr., also a Ridgefielder and chairman of the Lee Hat board, collapsed and died while marching in Ridgefield’s 250th Anniversary parade in 1958 — he was only 51. Their father lived to be 70.)

James Sr.’s survivors included his wife, Mary, two daughters, and a son, James B. Lee Jr., who was only 11 years old and a student at Veterans Park School. Jimmy, as he was known then and throughout his life, was also attended catechism classes at St. Mary’s.

“Jimmy was in my first-grade class 1958-59,” recalled Patrick Wahl, who considered Lee his best childhood friend.  “All the Catholic kids got to know each other and by second grade we

walked to the afternoon religious classes together.  Odd notion by today’s standards, but a bunch of seven-year-olds running up Catoonah Street raised no eyebrows back in the day.”

Jimmy, who was born in 1952 in Manhattan, continued in the Ridgefield schools through freshman year at RHS in 1967 when he was elected class president. He would have graduated in the Class of 1970, but his mother, then Mrs. Ed Raleigh, sent him to Canterbury School where his father had gone.  There he was a captain of the hockey and track teams and co-editor of the school newspaper. He went on to graduate from Williams College, majoring in economics and art history.

He began his career at Chemical Bank and built its investment banking business as it grew larger through mergers with Manufacturers Hanover and Chase Manhattan Banks. He ran Chase’s investment banking operations, and after another merger, became vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase. 

“He advised on some of the biggest deals, including United Airlines’ acquisition of Continental, General Electric’s sale of NBCUniversal to Comcast, and the News Corporation’s purchase of Dow Jones,” said Andrew Ross Sorkin in his New York Times obituary of Lee.  (Coincidentally, Dow Jones owned the Danbury News-Times after Ottaway sold the paper.)

He was the “behind-the-scenes consigliere to the world’s top corporate chieftains, hatching mergers and public offerings for companies as diverse as General Motors, Facebook and Alibaba,” Sorkin wrote. “He was a constant presence in the lives of moguls like Rupert Murdoch of the News Corporation and Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric.”

Jamie Dimon, his boss at JPMorgan Chase and also a close friend, looked to Lee constantly for advice. But Lee often offered more than advice. When Dimon was going through difficult times because of a Justice Department investigation, Lee arranged for Tom Brady, the New England Patriots quarterback, to call Dimon to cheer him up. 

Dimon told a 2005 gathering of corporate leaders that “Jimmy Lee has probably lent a trillion dollars to the people in this room. And almost all of it has been paid back.”

Times writer David Gelles said Lee “shaped corporate America, and the nation’s biggest bank, through a career that established him as perhaps the pre-eminent deal maker of his generation.”

Jimmy Lee died in 2015 at the age of 62. His funeral in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan was presided over by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan. The honorary ushers were a Who’s Who of leading business people: Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire ex-mayor of New York; Barry Diller, the media owner; Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL; Jeffrey Immelt of GE; Charlie Rose, the TV host and a longtime friend; and Stephen A. Schwarzman, head of the huge private equity firm, Blackstone (Schwarzman had offered him a more lucrative job as #2 at Blackstone, a post Lee declined because he loved his work at JPMorgan Chase). 

Dimon delivered a eulogy at the funeral. “In business, you were brilliant, a shining star, one of the best we’ve seen,” he said. “You were a nuclear power, a sun of positive energy. You had unbridled enthusiasm and optimism. Your deal-making was legendary. You were simply a huge influence on the success of so many of us.”

But perhaps the most touching tribute came from his son, who told how his father left notes for him and his two sisters before catching the 5 a.m. train from Darien to Manhattan each morning. He also described his dad’s guitar talents, and how he would practice for performances with a band of JPMorgan staff members, called the Bank Notes.

“He was a star, he was a superstar, and he went out at the top of his game,” said his son, whose name is also James. His dad had also been the best man at his wedding.

Samuel Rubel: 

The Ice and Beer Baron

The life of Samuel Rubel reads like a script to a lively Hollywood drama. A penniless Latvian immigrant arrives in the United States at the turn of the 20th Century, begins peddling ice on the  streets of Brooklyn, soon creates a growing company, has his fiancé arrested for grand larceny and

then marries her, becomes a multi-multi millionaire, is indicted for heavy handed business practices, turns into a beer baron, parties with 10,000 orphans at Coney Island, sees his 32-room home burn to the ground, moves to a mountaintop mansion in Ridgefield, and soon dies. Oh, and his widow marries a supermarket magnate and lives on Fifth Avenue.

Samuel R. Rubel was born in 1881 in Latvia, then part of Russia. Around 1904, he emigrated from Riga and, with barely a dollar to his name, arrived in Brooklyn. “He went to work in a seltzer-bottling establishment and by dint of many privations and much frugality, saved enough to buy a horse and wagon,” The New York Times once reported. “He then sent to Russia for his brother, Isadore, and together they started the Independent Ice Company.”

It was the era of the icebox, long before the days of refrigerators, and Rubel sold blocks of icebox ice to the occupants of the tenements in the East New York section of Brooklyn. The  business grew, expanded to include coal for heating, and within a few years, he and his brother headed the Rubel Coal and Ice Company in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn.

In 1912, The Times published the first of dozens of stories about Rubel — this one probably the most extraordinary. In February, he pressed charges of forgery and grand larceny against Dora Nachumowitz, who had been his bookkeeper. She had also been his fiancé. 

According to The Times, testimony in police court revealed that “Rubel had promised to marry her, but the engagement had been broken. She then sued him for breach of promise. The suit is still pending. Among the witnesses against Miss Nachumowitz was Henrietta Marcus who succeeded her as bookkeeper. Miss Marcus testified to finding that Miss Nachumowitz had indorsed [sic] a check for $50 payable to the company, and had not entered the payment on the company’s books.” 

Nachumowitz was released on $1,000 bond but apparently the charges were soon dropped, for not long afterward, Rubel and Nachumowitz were married. They went on to have two daughters, and remained together until his death. She, in fact, took over his corporation when he died.

The Rubel ice and coal empire, with Samuel now in command, continued to grow. By 1913 his company was worth $2 million and in 1925, 20 years after he’d arrived from Latvia, he’d engineered a $25-million merger with several companies into the huge Rubel Coal and Ice Corporation, which became the largest purveyor of those commodities in the eastern United States. (His newspaper ads in the late 1920s proclaimed that he had “the largest coal and ice office in the world.”) He had 25 ice plants and 15 coal supply yards spread around New York City alone, and was also serving customers in northern New Jersey. Two years later he acquired even more companies, had 40 ice factories, 50 coal yards, 2,000 employees, and a value of nearly $30 million. Rubel would promote his coal with a bit of humor: “One good ton deserves another,” he’d quip.

But legal problems were beginning to arise. In 1927, a court in Brooklyn indicted Rubel and two of his officers for conspiracy to drive competitors out of business. They were also served with 28 separated civil actions.

“Among the intimidations charged to the defendants is a demand that stockholders in the Paerdegat corporation turn over their minority stock of the Rubel corporation to them on pain of being driven out of business,” The Times said. “When this demand was refused, according to the indictment, the Rubel corporation not only refused to sell ice to those stockholders, but prevented them from getting it elsewhere. Free ice was furnished to customers of the Paerdegat corporation to take them away from that corporation.” The cases were eventually settled quietly.

Later that year, one of Rubel’s own partners named Henry J. Senger sued him for $6 million, charging that Rubel had lied to him about the degree of authority Senger would have in the company — Senger said he understood he would be an equal partner when he merged his company with Rubel’s — and that Rubel even had detectives spying on him. The two settled that suit out of court a year later.

In 1930, Rubel filed a libel suit against Jay Carton, an investment broker and one of his minority stockholders, charging that Carton had written a letter to other Rubel minority stockholders in which alleged that Rubel had failed to pay them dividends and forced them to sell their stock at less than book value.

Two years later, Carton himself sued, charging Rubel with mismanaging the company and speculating on Wall Street with its funds, causing the company to lose $20 million. The Rubel company by then was said to be worth $40 million — $715 million in 2016 dollars — of which more than 90% was owned by Samuel Rubel himself. That December, after a two-week trial, the suit was suddenly and unexpectedly settled out of court.

Finally, in 1934, a New York Supreme Court judge sentenced Rubel to 10 days in jail for contempt of court after he had shown a “flagrant disregard of court mandates.” The judge had ordered him to appear in court in connection with another civil suit by a company called Paramount Ice, which had charged Rubel with using illegal tactics to take over their territory and thereby create a monopoly in Brooklyn.  Rubel failed to appear and was sentenced to jail. He appealed and escaped the sentence, but paid a fine.

Meanwhile,  if all those legal battles were not enough, in 1931, two 20-year-old men sent a letter to Rubel’s wife, Dora, threatening to kill her if she did not pay them $10,000. The two were arrested, convicted of attempted extortion and sent to prison.

And then in 1944, during World War II, Rubel’s son-in-law was sentenced to 30 days in jail and fined $1,000 after pleading guilty to 37 charges of violating the wartime Office of Price Administration ceilings on the sale of coal. He had charged five to fifty cents per ton above limits for coal sold to dealers handling small lots of fuel in poor sections of the city. The Times headlined the story: “Coal Chiseler is Jailed.”

By 1927 Rubel was seeing the future of ice beginning to melt. Refrigerators were becoming

more common and his ice sales were declining. So in what some might consider an odd move during Prohibition, he bought the Ebling Brewery Company in the Bronx, noted for making beers “aged in natural rock caves.” Perhaps he saw the repeal of Prohibition as inevitable. Probably he  got a great price in the dry decade, especially after a scandal in which Ebling’s headquarters were padlocked by police after a raid uncovered two truckloads of beer with higher-than-legal alcohol content, The Times reported. At any rate, while Rubel told authorities that he planned to use the factory for making ice cream, he probably instead produced legal “near beer,” which had a very low alcohol content, to keep the operation alive until until Prohibition was repealed in 1933.

The brewery became a big money-maker in the 30s and at least the early 40s. In 1947, Rubel was widely quoted when he decided to take part in voluntary grain rationing to help provide more food for Europe, which was still struggling in the aftermath of World War II. “When it’s a question of beer or bread, our vote is for bread every time,” he told the President’s Food Committee in Washington.

The brewery closed in 1950, the year after Rubel’s death. Many years later, developers leveled the old brewery building and were about to start foundation work for a big apartment complex when they stumbled upon the long-forgotten cluster of caves Ebling had dug a century earlier for aging its beer — 20 feet wide and up to 100 feet deep. Workers — unaware of Ebling’s old motto of “aged in natural rock caves” — at first speculated that the caverns were part of the Underground Railroad or perhaps old bomb shelters. “It was amazing,” said one building official. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

While Rubel and his wife lived in Brooklyn, they had a country estate in Roslyn, on Long Island, consisting of a 32-room home atop a hill surrounded by 50 acres. In April 1946 a workman spread some paint remover on exposed wiring, causing an explosion. The house burned to the ground, destroying more than a million dollars worth of antiques and jewelry as well as a pipe organ worth more than $100,000 ($1.3 million today). “The ruined house presented a strange picture this morning,” The Times said. “In the cellar, which was nearly full of water, hundreds of cases of Scotch whisky and other liquors stood exposed amid charred debris.”

In 1947, Sunny Cutten was trying to sell her house, Sunset Hall, a mansion built in 1912 on Old West Mountain Road in Ridgefield. She even offered it to the United Nations as a possible headquarters site, and they came and took a look. The handsome house included eight bedrooms, six baths, nine fireplaces, a full-sized ballroom, views if the New York City skyline, and many other amenities.  

Burned out on Long Island, Rubel went looking for a new place to the north, came across Sunset Hall, and fell in love with the place. After moving in, he made some of his own entertainment modifications,  including an elaborate stone barbecue in the pool area. However, a more unusual feature was described by town historian Dick Venus. “One of the surprises for his guests were slides, similar to those on a playground, that went from the bedroom windows to the pool,” Venus reported in 1987. “This was before the day of the heated pools so it is expected that those using the slide in the early morning would be fully awake by the time they reached the cool waters of the pool.”

Rubel also lined the walls of his house with art. “It was said that Sam Rubel had so many works  of art that before long, the place began to look like a museum,” Venus wrote. “It sure looked like a museum a few years later when I was selected as one of the appraisers for the estate.”

Samuel Rubel may have been hard-nosed in business, but he was soft-hearted when it came to kids. He supported the work of many orphanages in the city and in 1933, brought more than 10,000 orphans at his own expense to Coney Island for a day of fun to mark the 65th anniversary of the Ebling Brewery. A few months before he died, he donated 1,100 acres — including the 350-acre Lake Stillwater — in the Poconos to the Boy Scouts of America. The land,  now known as Camp Minsi, is still in use today (an inlet on Lake Stillwater has been named “Rubel Cove.”) A longtime member of the Brooklyn Boy Scout Council, Rubel said the gift expressed his gratitude for the opportunities that America had given him.

On April 27, 1949, Rubel suffered a blood clot while at his New York office. Two days later, he died at Sunset Hall. He was 66 years old. 

At his  death, the value of his estate was placed at $8 million ($81 million today). Much of the

contents of Sunset Hall were sold at a 1950 auction at Parke-Bernet Galleries — now Sotheby’s. The catalogue for the sale was 142 pages long.

The estate itself was purchased in 1955 by the Congregation of the Mission of St. Vincent de Paul. It was used as a novitiate to train future Vincentian priests and brothers until the late 1960s when it reverted to a single-family residence. For many years, it was the home of actor Robert Vaughn. 

In 1959, Dora Rubel, then chairman of the board of the Rubel Corporation,  married a recent widower, Louis Daitch, one of the owners of the Daitch Supermarket chain which became known as Shopwell and now, The Food Emporium. She died in 1969 at the age of 74 and is buried next to Samuel in Mount Ararat Cemetery, East Farmingdale, Long Island.

Rubel’s colorful and litigious life included a history-making event with which he had no personal connection, yet bears his name. On Aug. 21, 1934, an armored car, collecting money for deposit in a bank, had stopped at one of Rubel’s ice and coal depots in Brooklyn to pick up a $450 deposit. A gang of hold-up men overpowered the guards and stole $427,000 — nearly $8 million in today’s dollars — from the truck. “The Rubel Ice and Coal Corporation Robbery” was famous for decades as holding the record for the largest amount of money ever taken in a robbery in New York City history.