Four sculptures by Albert Sampson Gross adorn the grounds of the Hillsdale Free Public Library.
About the artist: Albert Sampson Gross (1907-1998) was a longtime Bergen County resident and well-known for his mastery of law and stainless steel. Born to Russian immigrants in 1907, Mr. Gross attended Harvard College on scholarship. A brush with scarlet fever sidelined his medical school studies. Taking that as a sign, he switched career tracks and entered Harvard Law School, also on scholarship. He met his future wife, Rose, of Leonia, during those formative years.
Mr. Gross clerked in Manhattan before hanging a shingle in Bergen County. Around the courthouse in Hackensack, Mr. Gross was known for bow ties and oratory of distinction. Some will recall his work as a dapper defense lawyer whose clients included police killer Thomas Trantino in 1963.
For many years, Mr. Gross spent his spare time and vacations painting. In 1968, in his mid-50s, he fired up a welding torch. Two years later his works were in two Madison Avenue galleries. One sculpture is a stainless steel pipe sculpted into a gentle “S” reaching to the sky located at Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey. It is titled “Reap the Whirlwind,” a reference a verse from the Book of Hosea: “For they shall have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”
When he retired to West Palm Beach with his wife around 1980, Mr. Gross left at least 200 stainless steel works, some of them located in the three-acre garden of his son Paul Gross.
Paul Gross donated four of these sculptures to the Borough of Hillsdale, and they can be viewed on the grass hill behind the library. Paul and Gayle Gross have been residents of Hillsdale for more than 50 years. They are delighted to share these creative works with the public.