Upon Morris Kinney's death in 1945, he left the estate to longtime friend John Talbot, Sr., former mayor of the borough, and a founder of the Chilton Memorial Hospital, Pompton Plains (John Talbot, Sr. was a real estate developer in New York City and a patron of the arts and was credited with the revival of ballet as a major art form in the United States in the 1930s), as a tribute to their lifetime friendship and mutually shared love of Smoke Rise.