Who owns jeffersons monticello

Saul Viener at Monticello on June 7, The history of Monticello does not end with Jefferson's death.

Nearly a century passed from the time between Jefferson's death and , the year that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation assumed the stewardship of the property. The story of the intervening years has been recorded with many variations, but of one fact there can be no disagreement: Monticello survives because of the efforts of its two major owners of the period, Uriah Phillips Levy , USN, and his nephew, Jefferson Monroe Levy.

These two men and their families held a very modern notion that the houses of great men should be preserved as "monuments to their glory," and their stewardship of the home and property is remarkable and significant. Uriah Levy's first view of Monticello -- eight years after Jefferson's death -- was dismaying. Upon learning that it was for sale, he decided to buy it and preserve it for the nation.

Levy promptly hired Joel Wheeler as overseer to supervise a restoration of both house and garden. The hero of this drama is Jefferson Monroe Levy. Because of an ongoing lawsuit, however, he was not confirmed in his title until May 1, Levy was born in and died in ; he never married, and during his residence at Monticello first his mother and then his sister served as hostess.

He was wealthy—very wealthy—and was one of the leading real estate developers and speculators in New York City. He was rich enough to have needed and to have installed a ticker tape in his bedroom so he could follow the money market while at home. From an examination of speeches that he had printed as well as his votes on various measures, we can surely label him as conservative. While not an observant Jew, he did seem to take his Jewish identity seriously and as a responsibility.

When the Russian pogroms broke out in the first decade of the 20th century, Jefferson Levy was one of those who formed the protest group that eventually led to the creation of the American Jewish Committee.

Why did he want Monticello? There is, unfortunately, very little in the record on this. The one time Levy did speak to this issue was in an address to the New York chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution [one should keep in mind that the male Levys belonged to this organization by right, as did the women to the DAR; this is a family that can trace its roots back well before the Revolution. From bits and pieces of other talks, one can assume, I believe, that like his uncle Levy idealized Thomas Jefferson as the great paragon of the American Republic.

By the time Levy gained full control of Monticello, it was but a pale shadow of what it had been 20 years earlier in , when Uriah had written his will. Where Uriah had bought surrounding property to build up the estate, Jefferson could only gain title to about the same holding that Barclay had passed on, the house and acres.

The house was in terrible shape, and the grounds had been untended for years. A full description of the restoration of Monticello is beyond our purview, so let me sum up what he did. He bought up an additional acres surrounding the estate which, while not restoring it to either the size at the time of Jefferson or even of his uncle, still gave Monticello greater breathing space.

After several years of intense effort, he finally managed to dislodge Joel Wheeler, and to secure as overseer a man who was as devoted to the restoration of Monticello as he was, Thomas L. Windows were repaired, the house repainted, internal and external renovations took place, and the grounds replanted according to Mr. Levy was of two minds, however, as to how to decorate the house. On the one hand he apparently attempted to purchase Jeffersonian artifacts whenever possible.

Levy maintained an agent in Europe for the purpose of purchasing furniture and works of art, although these seemed to have been divided between Jeffersonian period pieces and that of the late Victorian era. For unlike his uncle, Jefferson Levy did spend at least four months of every year up on the little mountain.

It was his summer home, and in it he honored his uncle as much as he honored Mr. Von Mayhoff, served as hostess, and we have some charming accounts by the children in the family of life in the great house.

Originally the road up to the house was so narrow that only one carriage could pass at a time, so that whenever anyone went up or down the road, a servant would ring a great gong as a warning. Jefferson Levy built a back road so that people could go down in safety, but nonetheless kept up the custom of having the gatekeeper bang the gong whenever a visitor arrived.

Although only a part-time resident, Levy took an active role in the life of nearby Charlottesville. In he restored the Town Hall, which had been built in as a theater, and renamed it the Levy Opera House. The structure is still standing. Every Fourth of July he would hold an open house for the residents of the community, and after he read the Declaration of Independence there would be fireworks and refreshments.

He allowed many groups use of the estate for events, and also was quite generous in allowing an almost unbroken stream of visitors to come up the mountain to pay homage to Mr. By , some accounts report that as many as 60 people a day would show up at Monticello.

Jefferson Levy lived at Monticello for many years, but as early as signs appeared that others wanted Mr. The stone obelisk that Jefferson had prescribed for his tombstone had been chipped away by souvenir hunters. A resolution by S. But the resolution quickly ran aground. The graveyard had never been part of the Monticello property, but from the time of its sale to Barclay had been reserved for the Jefferson family, and the heirs, now numbering nearly 50, had no intention of relinquishing it to the national government.

Nor did Levy intend to cede property rights of way to the graveyard. Part of this can certainly be attributable to the revival of the Democratic Party that he had helped to found from its tribulations during the Civil War era. By the first decade of the 20th century the number of visitors to Monticello reached nearly 50, annually. In , William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic candidate for president wrote to Levy suggesting that he convey Monticello to the government for a public memorial.

Levy replied that all the money in the United States Treasury would not buy Monticello. There was no historic preservation movement, and the Rockefeller interest in what would become Colonial Williamsburg was still three decades away.

Enter Maud Littleton, an attractive and far from retiring Southern belle. Originally from Texas and now married to Congressman Martin Littleton of Brooklyn, she first visited Monticello in , fulfilling what she claimed had been a childhood dream. But ten years later she changed her story, and claimed that instead of being overwhelmed with the house, or even grateful that the owner of private property had let her tramp around his home, she had been devastated by the neglect and poor custodianship of its owner.

My heart sunk. Maud Littleton now had a mission in life—to wrest Monticello away from Jefferson Levy and make it a public memorial to her childhood idol. She began petitioning Congress to buy the estate. She went back and dug up the all-but-forgotten will of Uriah Levy, in which he had tried to give Monticello to the nation.

Congress held a number of hearings over the next several years, most of them deteriorating into verbal duels between Levy and Madame Littleton.

If one reads the hearings one gets a sense of one-sidedness. An attractive Mrs. She accused Levy of standing in the way of the American people, of being selfish, of not caring for anything except his own comfort. Levy was at a disadvantage. In , before the era of effective mass communication, he did not have a venue from which he could effectively make his case. Besides that, the customs of the times prevented him from going after Mrs.

Littleton and calling her a liar. Fortunately for Levy, a number of newspaper editors objected very strongly to Mrs. One was the general view of private property rights, and the notion that government ought not to interfere with those rights. The other was the delicious fact that Mr.

President Jefferson had been a skinflint with the public purse, with the exception of the purchase of Louisiana. Had not Woodrow Wilson been elected in , Levy probably would have kept Monticello; in fact he did keep it for another 11 years. But the handwriting was on the wall. William Jennings Bryan, now secretary of state, eagerly signed on, and so did the Virginia-born occupant of the White House.

In March the Virginia legislature endorsed the plan to have Congress buy Monticello and make it a national monument. The Senate Lands Committee reported a resolution to establish a joint congressional committee to investigate the feasibility of acquiring Monticello by purchase or—a word that Levy had fearfully anticipated—condemnation. The shift to wheat and grain cultivation from tobacco made plantation industries like blacksmithing, coopering, joinery, and carpentry essential to efficient operations.

At Monticello, those activities centered on Mulberry Row, a terrace south of the great house that was developed to support the construction of Monticello I.

In its earliest phase, it featured the joinery, log buildings where groups of enslaved people lived, and a stone house for hired artisans. The second phase of Mulberry Row, from to , coincided with the reconstruction of Monticello and the shift from tobacco to wheat cultivation.

The slave houses from the second phase of Mulberry Row illustrate important changes among living conditions for the enslaved. The buildings for enslaved workers from the first phase of Mulberry Row have an interesting architectural feature: multiple subfloor pits in the building, probably covered by boards. Scholars interpret these as safe-deposit boxes for enslaved people, a place to store food and other personal goods. The second phase of Mulberry Row corresponds with the house reconstruction and the shift to wheat cultivation, when enslaved domestic workers , artisans, and field workers negotiated for more private, more autonomous family-based houses.

The smaller size of the buildings to house fewer people and the disappearance of the subfloor pits suggest that enslaved people were able to live in family units: when people live as a family, they have no need to safeguard their possessions from their cohabitants. The third phase of Mulberry Row, from to , signaled the removal of the dairy, smokehouse, and washhouse to the recently completed South Terrace wing.

This centralized the great-house domestic complex, leaving Mulberry Row to continue serving as housing for enslaved domestic workers and artisans and as the center of plantation industries. Jefferson had numerous buildings demolished or expanded and repurposed. Jefferson used the retaining walls that supported the terrace as warming beds, which allowed him to extend the growing season significantly. Down the hill from the terraced garden were the eight-acre orchard, a vineyard, and the berry squares plots of figs, currants, gooseberries, and raspberries.

Jefferson was a noted gourmet, and his garden provided the raw materials for many of the culinary masterpieces created by the enslaved chefs James Hemings, Peter Hemings, Edith Fossett, and Fanny Hern.

When Jefferson died in , he was deeply in debt. To satisfy his creditors, his heirs decided to sell Monticello and its furnishings, agricultural implements, and enslaved people to raise necessary funds. After several years on the market and for considerably less than the asking price, the property sold in to a young apothecary from Charlottesville, James Turner Barclay, who hoped to turn a profit by cultivating silkworms on the plantation. In , Uriah Phillips Levy, a Jewish naval officer who admired Jefferson and his support of religious toleration , purchased the house.

With an exception during and after the American Civil War — , the Levy family owned Monticello for eighty-nine years.

The Levys made significant repairs to the house, repurchased furnishings and property owned by Jefferson, and helped establish the methods of modern historic preservation still practiced today. Their efforts saved Monticello. In , the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation renamed the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in , a nonprofit organization, purchased the property from the Levy family with money raised through a national campaign to open it to the public.

The Foundation still owns and operates Monticello, adhering to a mission of preservation and education. Encyclopedia Virginia Grady Ave. Virginia Humanities acknowledges the Monacan Nation , the original people of the land and waters of our home in Charlottesville, Virginia. We invite you to learn more about Indians in Virginia in our Encyclopedia Virginia. Skip to content. Contributor: Emilie Johnson. Monticello I Early Sketch of Monticello. Monticello II As early as , Jefferson began making plans to renovate his house, even though construction did not begin until Thomas Jefferson.

Mulberry Row Daguerreotype of Isaac Jefferson. April 13, Thomas Jefferson turns twenty-one and comes into his inheritance from his father, Peter Jefferson, who died in September 6, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson dies at Monticello from complications related to the birth of her daughter Lucy. Construction of the dependencies under the North and South Terraces is also largely complete. The dairy, smokehouse, and washhouse are removed to the recently completed South Terrace wing.

July 4, Thomas Jefferson dies at Monticello. January To satisfy Thomas Jefferson's creditors, his heirs hold an auction of Jefferson's household goods, furnishings, and enslaved people.