April 2026

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XXIII, Number 4                                                      April 2026

THE VILLAGE: When I give talks on Saving Monticello and get to the point of explaining how Uriah Levy, a U.S. Navy Lieutenant, had the financial wherewithal to buy Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in 1834, I explain that he had invested in real estate in a farming village that was part of New York City in the late 1820s. And that soon thereafter artists and artisans began moving to that part of lower Manhattan and the streets were paved in that part of the city known as Greenwich Village.

Uriah Levy, in 1828, bought three rooming houses, commonly known then as boarding houses—apartment-like buildings in which renters had individual rooms and shared kitchen facilities—in the Village, two on Duane Street and one on Greenwich Street.

Levy then went on a buying spree, acquiring more rooming houses in the Village and elsewhere in lower Manhattan. 

Over the next 20 years, he amassed a not-inconsiderable fortune through his New York City rooming house and other real estate holdings. In 1855, U.P. Levy—as he listed on the NYC tax rolls—had become one of the wealthiest men in Manhattan with an estimated wealth of some $500,000, an enormous sum in the mid-nineteenth century.

At the time of his 1862 death, in addition to Monticello and its surrounding acreage, Uriah Levy owned more than two dozen properties in New York, primarily rooming houses and other residential real estate in Greenwich Village. He owned buildings on Duane, Division, Canal, Houston, McDougal, Thompkins, Greenwich, Rivington, Broome, Crosby, Prince, Houston, Macdougal, Sullivan, and Thompson Streets, and one on 1st Avenue. You can see some of them listed in the above screenshot of an online image of the NYC Office of Receiver Tax’s list of UPL’s properties in the year of his death.

Many of those properties are long gone, as is the townhouse where Urial Levy lived at 107 St. Mark’s Place near 1st Avenue, which was demolished. It’s the site today of a 48-unit, six-story apartment building that went up in 1920.

Speaking of vintage Greenwich Village real estate, I recently learned that the oldest house in the village—and one of the oldest surviving structures in New York City—is the Isaacs-Hendricks House, a one time “free-standing, Federal style farmhouse with yard,” according to the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation’s “Off the Grid” blog.  

The house (above) sits at the corner of Bedford and Commerce Streets, a block from 7^th Avenue in the West Village. It was built in 1799, and has been enlarged several times since, including the addition of third floor in 1928.

Wholesale merchant Joshua Isaacs, who built the house, sold it to Harmon Hendricks, a copper mill owner and merchant, in the early 1800s who was a contemporary of Uriah Levy’s.

Part of the Greenwich Village Historic District and designated a New York City Landmark in 1969, the Isaacs-Hendricks house was sold last year. The price: $1.25-million.     

MORE MANAGERS: I devoted the entire March 2026 issue to new information I learned from Sam Towler. An independent researcher in Charlottesville, Sam has uncovered loads of information over the years on the people who lived and worked at Monticello during the Levy Family’s ownership—and has regularly shared it with me.

I wrote in March about Sam’s recent discovery that a man named Minor Houchins (whom I did not run across when researching the book), was Uriah Levy’s first farm manager, mostly likely from 1836, when Levy took control of the property, to 1849. Ira C. Garrison succeeded Houchins in that role, probably in 1850. Sometime after Garrison joined the Confederate Army in 1861, Joel Wheeler took over, and stayed until 1879 when Jefferson M. Levy bought out the other UPL heirs and became the owner of the property.

Sam subsequently emailed me with information on the farm manager/overseer situation under Jefferson Levy’s ownership, which he gleaned following his latest deep dive into Albemarle County wills, lawsuit depositions, tax records, letters, Census data, and other primary source materials.

In Saving Monticello, I wrote that after Jefferson Levy “evicted Joel Wheeler” in 1879, he “went through six overseers at Monticello” in the next ten years before he hired “his seventh, 26-year-old Thomas L. Rhodes.” But I never found out the names of the six overseers/managers.

Sam discovered three of the names, as well as other new information, including the fact that Jefferson Levy did not fire Joel Wheeler.

The proof: Levy did not gain title to Monticello until March 1879 and Wheeler, Sam found, had been gone from the mountaintop since at least January of that year.

That’s when George Carr, the Charlottesville lawyer who was the executor of Uriah Levy’s estate, hired Jefferson Levy’s father Jonas Levy (one of Uriah brothers) to be the Monticello farm manager.

Then, in 1883, a local man, Thomas H. Rhodes (who likely was related to Thomas L. Rhodes) replaced the peripatetic Jonas Levy (he moved a lot) as Monticello’s farm manager. T.H. Rhodes lasted about a year, then gave way to Edward C. Garrison, who probably was related to Ira C. Garrison.

The Albemarle Property Book lists at least five other men as owning property (mostly livestock) at Monticello during those years. Each one may have managed the farm at one point: John C. Wells, John B. Andrews, A.M. Estes, Claudius E. Whitlock, and John W. Porter. Of that group, Sam believes that John Wells likely was the farm manager at one point, but it’s much less certain that any of the others did more than graze cattle on the property.

What we do know for sure, and what I reported in Saving Monticello, is that Jefferson Levy hired Thomas L. Rhodes in 1889 and he would stay on as Monticello’s overseer for some five decades. He is given credit for being a tireless worker and a passionate advocate for the preservation and protection of Jefferson's architectural masterpiece.

EVENTS & COMMERCE:  I am scheduling events for the rest of the year, most of them on Lafayette: Idealist General and Saving Monticello. I’m also doing talks, podcasts, and other events for all of my books, including Saving Monticello. 

They’re listed on this page on my website: marcleepson.com/events

If you’d like to arrange a talk, podcast appearance, or other event on any of my books, feel free to email me at marcleepson@gmail.com 

To order signed copies, go to https://bit.ly/BookOrdering