Liebovitz & Knapp Families: 
Much Talent and Generosity

A remarkable but locally little known family who lived on Bennett’s Farm Road for more than a half century gave Ridgefield a large and important part of their estate as parkland. 

For 30 years, David  Liebovitz, a writer whose father rose from a poor immigrant to a millionaire industrialist, and his wife, a concert violinist whose friends included Jascha Heifetz,  maintained a 45-acre farm, more than half of which their grandchildren donated to the town in 2013.

The story begins in 1852 when Simon Liebovitz was born in Russia. As a young man he emigrated to America,  arriving  in 1874 penniless and jobless. Within two years he had met and married Fannie Unterberg, another recent Russian immigrant, and they began producing a family that wound up totalling six boys.

But Simon and Fannie also worked together to  establish  one of New York’s first silk factories at 60 Canal Street in Manhattan. A half century later, S. Liebovitz & Sons employed several thousand people at factories in five states, producing silk, shirts and other garments. When he died in 1930 at the age of 76, his estate was valued at more than $11 million in 2021 dollars, but he had already given much of it to his sons and to charities such as the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. Fannie Liebovitz was also a major philanthropist, especially aiding Jewish causes, and was a founder of the Young Women’s Hebrew Association in New York City. She died in 1944 at the age of 82.

Most of their sons had entered the business with their father, but not David, the youngest, born in 1892. He favored the arts. While David attended Columbia University, he took a break to spend a year in Europe visiting scores of museums and art galleries, reading European literature, and attending many concerts and operas. After graduating Columbia in 1915, he decided to become a writer  — with a break to serve in the Navy during World War I. (For his 1917 draft registration, he gave his occupation as “author.”)

His play, John Hawthorn, was produced by the Theatre Guild in New York City in 1921. It got awful reviews, mostly complaining of stilted dialogue — although one critic criticized the critics for missing the significance of the play’s plot.

Perhaps taking that experience as a lesson, he turned to writing novels, producing three in the next two decades. The first, Youth Dares All, came out in 1930 and “has all the juiciness and humor of Mark Twain,” said historian, sociologist and literary critic Lewis Mumford, with whom Liebovitz became good friends and a correspondent for more than 40 years.

The Chronicle of An Infamous Woman (1933), about a woman whose life is tarnished by local gossips, was called “one of the major novels of our decade” by one reviewer and The Canvas Sky (1946) was described as an unusual novel of circus life.

David Liebovitz also had a taste for art. Starting in the 1920s he began collecting contemporary Western  art as well as Asian works. Pieces of his are now in museum collections.

In 1920, he married Emily Gresser, a Brooklyn native who was a violin prodigy. Born in 1894 to parents who had fled Czarist Russia, Emily began studying the violin at  the age of six. When she graduated from high school, she was accomplished enough to give a recital in Mendelssohn Hall whose audience included such notables as Booker T. Washington, future Harvard president Charles Eliot, and Mark Twain. “My child, you do not know how much joy this evening gave me, how I enjoyed your playing,” Twain told her after the performance.

      Gresser went on to study the violin in Europe and there gave many solo concerts and performed with many leading orchestras. The outbreak of World War I brought her back to America where she toured the country, giving concerts on her own and with large and small  orchestras.

      She also became friends with the young violin prodigy, Jascha Heifetz. Much later, Heifetz  would have a home in Redding and Emily would drive over and join him playing the violin in Heifetz’s “music barn.” Today, Heifetz’s home and music barn are owned by Albert Knapp and Ruth Oratz, both physicians. Albert is  Emily and David’s grandson.

      In the mid-1930s, the Liebovitzes sought a home in the country, perhaps driven by David’s interest in nature. As their daughter, Dr. Bettina Liebovitz Knapp expressed it, he “turned to the world of nature in all its full-blown wisdom for solace and inspiration.”

In 1936, they purchased a former Todd brothers farm spanning both sides of Bennett’s Farm Road east of Knollwood Drive. The Greek Revival-style farmhouse at 219 Bennett’s Farm Road was built around 1785 by the Selleck family, whose branches had several large farms in southern Ridgebury. David and Emily, and their two children, Bettina and Daniel, would spend summers and many weekends there, while maintaining an apartment in Manhattan. David died in 1968, Emily in 1981.

Their son Daniel became a physician in California and a professor at Stanford Medical School. Widely known as “Dr. Dan” Liebowitz (spelled with a W), he was, like his parents, a person of many interests. He was a model steam locomotive hobbyist, who had a sizable outdoor track layout  running a number of small-scale, real-steam locomotives. Like his dad and his sister, he was a also writer, producing a novel, The Lion and The Flame, in 1992; two biographies, John Kirk, the Livingstone Expeditions, and the Crusade Against Slavery in East Africa (1999) and The Last Expedition — Stanley’s Mad Journey Through the Congo (2005), as well as a cookbook, Cook to Your Heart’s Content on a Low Fat, Low Salt Diet, (1970). He died in 2014.

      David and Emily’s daughter, Bettina, born in 1926, became professor at Hunter College and author of more than a dozen books on a wide variety of subjects ranging from French fairy tales, gambling, women, and Hebrew myths to biographies of such writers as Emily Dickinson and Jean Cocteau.

She died in 2010 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery alongside her husband, Col. Russell Sage Knapp,  a highly decorated World War II Air Force veteran whose bravery in action as a bomber navigator  over Europe was recognized by the French government which named him a Knight in the National Order of the Legion of Honor. He later served in Korea and Vietnam.  Born in 1920 and a 1947 graduate of the Columbia University School of Law, he had a long and distinguished career in both law and business, and was a partner of the U.S. Senator Jacob Javits in the Manhattan law firm of Trubin, Sillcocks, Edelman, and Knapp.

Russell died in 2012. Like many members of the family, he and Bettina were philanthropists. He established the Russell Sage Knapp Education Fund, a foundation that aids medical research and higher education.

      Sons Charles and Albert Knapp  inherited the family farm. No doubt also  inheriting the generous spirit of their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, they decided to turn the 28 acres south of Bennett’s Farm Road into open space while selling the 16-acre homesite to a builder. They knew that the 28 acres bordered Pierrepont State Park — connecting the park with Bennett’s Farm Road — so they offered it first to the state. The gift would enlarge the Pierrepont Park from 386 acres to nearly 415 acres. However, the state suggested that it would be faster and easier for the Knapps to give the land to the town as open space than to deal with the bureaucratic delays involved in donating to the state.

 

That pleased Dr. Ben Oko, then chairman of the Conservation Commission, who had for some years been trying to contact Bettina Knapp about letting the town have that land.

“When coupled with the development of the property across the street…, that property will give us a connection between Hemlock Hills and Pierrepont State Park, two of the largest open spaces in Ridgefield,” Dr. Oko said in 2013. The subdivision on the north side of Bennett’s Farm Road, he added, “will have five acres of open space with pedestrian access from Hemlock Hills to the donated property.”

  

The Conservation Commission created a trail on the south side’s 28 acres and today describes the tract  as having a “one-mile loop with interesting rocky knolls, seasonal streams, a cascade, and a vernal pool in the spring.”

This open space on the south and a pedestrian access on the north also provides a new connection between Pierrepont State Park and the Ives Trail, a long, parkland path commemorating composer Charles Ives that runs through parts of Ridgefield, Danbury, Bethel and Redding.

The 28-acre donation is known as “the Liebowitz- Knapp Sanctuary,” recalling a generous family who had found “solace and inspiration” in their Ridgefield farm.

Otto Lippolt: 

Collector and Lover of Land

Otto Lippolt was a man who loved the land and collected what he loved. Most of what he collected is now town parkland.

A native of Massachusetts,  Otto F. Lippolt was born in 1891 and moved in the 1920s to a 100-acre farm at the corner of Ridgebury Road and George Washington Highway (the farmhouse later became the Ridgebury Congregational Church parsonage). 

A well-known and respected well driller and well serviceman,  Lippolt was on call 24/7. 

“His generosity was fabulous,” said his friend Carl Baumhart in a 1965 tribute after Lippolt had died at the age of 74.  “Let anyone call and say they were out of water and even if the hour be 3 a.m., he dressed and went to find out why. A cry for water was, to him, a cry of distress.”

Lippolt also collected Ridgebury land, especially during the Depression, when many large and long-unused  tracks would come up at tax sales. 

“Any man who loved trees and nature so much was bound to obtain as much of it as possible,” Baumhart said.  “So he acquired a considerable part of the Ridgebury area.”

By the 1950s he had amassed more than 700 acres, and began slowly subdividing a small portion that he called Hemlock Hills, which included Old Mill and Bear Mountain Roads. But he was not a cut-and-slash developer. 

“He knew there’d eventually be a population explosion and that Ridgebury would participate,” wrote  Baumhart, a former newspaperman and Famous Writers School teacher. “He meant to see to it that the lovely land he owned went to those who felt much as he did about it. He wouldn’t sell to just anybody. 

“He had an outdoorsman’s love of the land. You could almost see his keen, far-seeing eyes stroking the surrounding hills gently as he gazed across them. He liked to detour now and then just to take a look at a particular giant of a tree that had become almost a personality to him.” 

Lippolt developed only a small portion of his vast holdings. As it turned out, two years after he died, his widow Marion Washburn Lippolt, a Ridgebury native, sold 570 acres to the town at the modest price of around $5,000 an acre; she could have sold to a developer, but she knew her husband  loved the land. Mrs. Lippolt died in 1984.

The “Lippolt property,” as it was first known, became the Hemlock Hills and Pine Mountain refuges. The Hemlock Hills section included a few dirt roads that Otto Lippolt had created in preparation for subdividing; some roads even had drainage culverts that still function more than a half century later. Wildflowers, including rare Bottle Gentians and Ladies’ Tresses orchids, sprang up in the middle of some of these dirt roads and at an old sand quarry.

The main dirt road through the Hemlock Hills tract existed long before Lippolt. Bogus Road, the northern part of which is now a paved town road, ran down to the area of Lake Windwing, and was used by the British as they marched from the burning of Danbury south to Ridgefield village and the Battle of Ridgefield on their back back to their ships at Compo in Westport.

Today,  Hemlock Hills and the Pine Mountain Refuges are part of the largest contiguous piece of open space in Ridgefield and one of the largest in Fairfield County. Its trails connect to a large parkland in Danbury and Bethel. 

Louise Peck: 

Conservationist & Philanthropist

One day in the early 1990s, two teenagers received $3,000 checks in the mail from a woman they’d never met. The boys’ parents had casually known Louise Peck for 25 years. Peck later told the parents she had seen the boys walking to school for many years, admired the fact that they walked instead of taking the bus, and wanted to help with their college educations. 

It was just one small example of the kindness – often unexpected or unusually generous – of a woman who gave away literally millions of dollars.

She did so quietly;  Peck was much better known as a vocal conservationist, who fought for land preservation long before it was popular. She spoke at meetings, wrote letters, served on the Conservation Commission for 11 years, was a supervisor of the Fairfield County Soil and Water Conservation District, and belonged to the conservation committee of the Ridgefield Garden Club for years. 

She sometimes got in trouble. In 1980, Peck was nearly take to court for libel after she wrote a fiery letter criticizing Casagmo/Fox Hill developer David Paul and his plans to build more condominiums on Danbury Road. 

But she was not afraid of being on the hot seat. In the early 1950s, when whites belonging to black organizations were unusual, Peck was very active in the newly formed Ridgefield Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. That was during the heyday of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and she was ridiculed for her work. As she said  years later, “I was called a communist by some of the supporters of that sickly man. That was because I was an officer of the NAACP at the time.”

Louise D. Peck was born in 1919  in New York City where she grew up and graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University. Her major in English served her during World War II when she was in the Women’s Army Corps. An instructor stationed in Goldsboro, N.C., from 1943 to 1945, she taught sometimes illiterate recruits to get their English up to at least sixth grade levels.

It was during her Army years that she met Grace Woodruff, who was to become her lifelong companion. “Woody,” who died in 1994, shared Peck’s desire to find a place in the country and the two came here in 1946, eventually buying a home on North Salem Road — which they called “Woodpecker Hill,” an amalgam of their names and their interest in birds. 

During the 1950s they operated a music store on Main Street, selling records, radio, sheet music, and some instruments.

Besides conservation work, Peck served on the library board, was a director of the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra, and a founder of the NAACP chapter here. 

A poet, her work was published in such magazines as Harper’s, and in The New York Times, for which she also wrote gardening and natural history articles. For many years she and Woodruff raised sheep at Woodpecker Hill, a fact reflected in the title of her book, “Lambing and Other Poems,” published in 1979.

Peck donated 10 acres at Turtle Pond and later most of her own homestead on North Salem Road to the Land Conservancy of Ridgefield. 

She not only fought for, but also lived conservation. Although she was well-to-do, she owned a small house and drove just about the tiniest, most economical cars she could find. Her own property was a wildlife refuge, full of fields with bluebird boxes and edged with plantings that were food and habitat for birds and other creatures.

After her death in 1999 at the age of 79, it was revealed that she had bequeathed more than three million dollars to such organizations as the Ridgefield Library, Keeler Tavern Museum, and the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra.

“Although Louise was outspoken when it came to many issues, her donations to civic, charitable, conservation, and arts organizations were done without fanfare, without the desire or need for recognition,” said one speaker at her memorial service. “There were no testimonial dinners, no awards, no hoop-la. Louise stood out as a model of modesty. She did good because she wanted to do good, not for any reward or recognition she would receive in return. She did good because it was the right thing to do.”

Otto Lippolt:
Collector & Lover of Land

Otto Lippolt was a man who loved the land and collected what he loved. Most of what he collected is now town parkland.

A native of Massachusetts,  Otto F. Lippolt was born in 1891 and moved in the 1920s to a 100-acre farm at the corner of Ridgebury Road and George Washington Highway (the farmhouse later became the Ridgebury Congregational Church parsonage). 

A well-known and respected well driller and well serviceman,  Lippolt was on call 24/7. 

“His generosity was fabulous,” said his friend Carl Baumhart in a 1965 tribute after Lippolt had died at the age of 74.  “Let anyone call and say they were out of water and even if the hour be 3 a.m., he dressed and went to find out why. A cry for water was, to him, a cry of distress.”

Lippolt also collected Ridgebury land, especially during the Depression, when many large and long-unused  tracks would come up at tax sales. 

“Any man who loved trees and nature so much was bound to obtain as much of it as possible,” Baumhart said.  “So he acquired a considerable part of the Ridgebury area.”

By the 1950s he had amassed more than 700 acres, and began slowly subdividing a small portion that he called Hemlock Hills, which included Old Mill and Bear Mountain Roads. But he was not a cut-and-slash developer. 

“He knew there’d eventually be a population explosion and that Ridgebury would participate,” wrote  Baumhart, a former newspaperman and Famous Writers School teacher. “He meant to see to it that the lovely land he owned went to those who felt much as he did about it. He wouldn’t sell to just anybody. 

“He had an outdoorsman’s love of the land. You could almost see his keen, far-seeing eyes stroking the surrounding hills gently as he gazed across them. He liked to detour now and then just to take a look at a particular giant of a tree that had become almost a personality to him.” 

Lippolt developed only a small portion of his vast holdings. As it turned out, two years after he died, his widow Marion Washburn Lippolt, a Ridgebury native, sold 570 acres to the town at the modest price of around $5,000 an acre; she could have sold to a developer, but she knew her husband  loved the land. Mrs. Lippolt died in 1984.

The “Lippolt property,” as it was first known, became the Hemlock Hills and Pine Mountain refuges. The Hemlock Hills section included a few dirt roads that Otto Lippolt had created in preparation for subdividing; some roads even had drainage culverts that still function more than a half century later. Wildflowers, including rare Bottle Gentians and Ladies’ Tresses orchids, sprang up in the middle of some of these dirt roads and at an old sand quarry.

The main dirt road through the Hemlock Hills tract existed long before Lippolt. Bogus Road, the northern part of which is now a paved town road, ran down to the area of Lake Windwing, and was used by the British as they marched from the burning of Danbury south to Ridgefield village and the Battle of Ridgefield on their back back to their ships at Compo in Westport.

Today,  Hemlock Hills and the Pine Mountain Refuges are part of the largest contiguous piece of open space in Ridgefield and one of the largest in Fairfield County. Its trails connect to a large parkland in Danbury and Bethel.