In 1932, Henry Jacques Gaisman, inventor and founder of the Gillette safety razor blade, purchased of land along Ridge Road, most of which he purchased from George A. C. Christiancy, son of the former U.S. minister to Peru, Isaac Peckham Christiancy. In 1952, at age 82, Gaisman married his nurse Catherine "Kitty" Vance Gaisman, aged 33, a former Catholic nun. In 1957, he and his wife Catherine (Mrs. Henry J. Gaisman) passed the title for his land to the New York Archdiocese for $600,000, with the agreement that they could live there as long as they wished. Mr. Gaisman died in 1974 at age 104, and Mrs. Gaisman remained on the estate until she moved to Connecticut in 1995. In 1999, the estate was saved from sale and development when the Town of Greenburgh acquired the property and reopened it as the Hart's Brook Nature Preserve. Part of the agreement included the preservation of some portion of the estate as a home for retired Catholic nuns. Today the Catherine and Henry J. Gaisman Foundation continues to donate large amounts of money to support medical research.