Buzz Aldrin’s N.J. home is on the market for $1M but local man wants it to be a museum

Renowned astronaut Buzz Aldrin grew up in a handsome stucco house in Upper Montclair, sleeping in a third-floor bedroom where he said he would slip out the window at night, to walk on the roof under the stars.

About two decades after the Aldrins’ moved out, in 1969, the new owners of 25 Princeton Place sat huddled around the television in his old living room, watching Aldrin and Neil Armstrong make their famous steps and leap across the surface of the moon.

But the matriarch of that family, Delores Kelly, died earlier this year, and now the seven-bedroom house is on the market for over $1 million.

For one local man with a passion for preserving Buzz Aldrin’s legacy, it’s now or never. Ilmar Vanderer, 52, has been working since last year on a proposal to turn the home into the Buzz Aldrin House Museum, and now he’s in a sprint to find investors to buy the home for that purpose before it is scooped up by another buyer.