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When Thomas Jefferson died on the July 4, 1826 -- the nation's fiftieth birthday -- he was $107,000 in debt. Forced to sell thousands of acres of his lands and nearly all of his possesssions, including his enslaved people, his heirs sold Monticello in 1831.
Saving Monticello is the first complete post-Jefferson history of this American architectural icon, telling a little-known but imporant historic preservation story: How a Jewish family saved the house that became a home to them for 89 years -- longer than the Jefferson Family owned it.
Twice the house came to the brink of ruin, and twice it was saved by two different members of the Levy family. Monticello's first savior was the mercurial U.S. Navy Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, a fifth-generation American who was born in Philadelphia in 1792, went on to a 50-year career in the Navy, and bought Monticello in 1834. With the property “in dilapidation and ruin,” as one visitor put, Levy commited his considerable resources to repair, restore, and preseve Jefferson “Essay in Architecture.”
After Levy died in 1862, his family fought over his will for the 17 years. During that time, Monticello fell into the hands of a caretaker who didn’t take very good care of the place. Among other things, he stabled cattle in the basement, milled and stored grain in the Entrance Hall, and allowed University of Virginia students and others to have parties there. Monticello soon went into a another priod steep physical decline, as is readily evident in image on the cover of the book (above), the oldest-known known photo of Monticello, dating from the early 1870s.
In 1879, Uriah's nephew, the aptly named Jefferson Monroe Levy, a highly successful real estate and stock speculator who later became a three-term Congressman from New York, bought out the other heirs and took control of the property. He went on to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair and restore the house and grounds. In 1911, Jefferson Levy faced a well-financed national campaign aimed at having the U.S. government confiscate Monticello and turn it into a presidential house museum.
In 1923, not long after that campaign—which was tinged with anti-Semitism—failed, Levy sold the house to the newly formed Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation. That non-profit, now known as the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, owns and operates Monticello today and pays tribute to Uriah and Jefferson Levy’s crucial stewardship of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.