Saving Monticello: The Newsletter
The latest about the book, author events, and more
Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson
Volume XXIII, Number 9 September 2026
FISKE & MARIE: The idea for Saving Monticello
came from my propensity when visiting historic properties to wonder how they
came to be preserved and restored. That’s why the book concentrates on the then
little-known story of how U.S. Navy officer Uriah P. Levy and his nephew Jefferson
Monroe Levy repaired and preserved Monticello on two different occasions during
the 89 years the family owned the property, from 1834-1923.
The book’s last section is a summary of the significant
restoration and preservation efforts that took place after J.M. Levy sold
Monticello to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation in December 1923.
That post-Levy Monticello tale cannot be told without including
the crucial work of Sidney Fiske Kimball (1888-1955). A Massachusetts-born
architectural scholar, Kimball was, among other things, a professor of
architecture and fine arts at the University of Michigan, taught architecture
at the University of Virginia, and the longtime director of the Philadelphia
Museum of Art.
When the Foundation formed and bought Monticello, 37-year-old
Fiske Kimball had become nationally recognized as the foremost expert on Thomas
Jefferson’s architecture.
Five months later, in May 1924, Kimball became the leading
voice in shaping Monticello’s restoration and preservation efforts when he took
the job—without pay, at first—as the Foundation’s Director of Restoration.
In Saving Monticello I neglected to mention another
important player in Monticello’s restoration and preservation: Marie Goebel
Kimball (1889-1955), Fiske Kimball’s wife. A Jefferson scholar who the
Foundation appointed Monticello’s first curator in 1944, Marie Kimball held
that pivotal position until her death in March 1955. (Fiske Kimball died five
months later.)
Marie Kimball’s job was “identifying, collecting, displaying, and interpreting the objects within the house,” Marie Frank, who directs the Architectural Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, wrote in her new book, Fiske & Marie Kimball: Shaping Public Engagement with Architecture and the Arts (University of Virginia Press).
The book is a valuable compilation of essays on the how the
Kimballs “shaped the experience and interpretation of art and architecture,” as
Frank puts it, not just at Monticello, but also at Colonial Williamsburg and
other historic sites in the early twentieth century.
Marie Kimball was an author, historian, and Jefferson scholar when she began working with her husband at Monticello in 1927. She “remained involved with the restoration of Monticello for most of the rest of her life,” Anna Berkes, the Manager for Public Services and Collections Development at the Foundation’s Jefferson Library, wrote
“Among other activities, she composed the first pamphlet
guides handed out to visitors, answered queries from visitors and researchers,
and was involved in the placement and maintenance of objects in the house.”
The essay that intrigued me the most in Fiske & Marie
Kimball is the fact-filled and revealing ‘As It is Accurate Historically,’ by
Gardiner Hallock, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s Senior Vice President for
Preservation and Operations
Hallock shows clearly how Fiske Kimball, as Monticello’s
Restoration czar, was “a fierce advocate for the careful, evidence-based
restoration” of the “main house, wings and surrounding landscapes.”
Hallock
writes that Kimball summed up his philosophy of restoring historic structures,
including Monticello as: it is “better to preserve than to repair; better to
repair than to restore; [and] better to restore than to construct or
reconstruct.” That is a philosophy, as Hallock notes, that the Thoms Jefferson Foundation
continues to follow to this day.
Although he concentrates on Kimball’s work after 1923, I was
pleased that in this well-researched and written excellent essay Hallock credits
Uriah and Jefferson Levy for their “excellent stewardship” of Monticello. He
points out that, as I wrote in Saving Monticello, the “dedicated” Levys
made no “dramatic, large-scale alterations” during their ownership and also mounted
“campaigns of significant repair and renovation.”
***************
Which brings us to Fiske Kimball’s strict-constructionist
approach as he took the Restoration reins at Monticello and became the guiding
hand of the restoration efforts, working closely with Charlottesville architect
Milton L. Grigg.
The Foundation’s effort to preserve, repair, and restore the
mansion and its outbuildings and grounds took decades. Since all of Thomas
Jefferson’s possessions were given to his heirs or auctioned off soon after he
died in 1826, Kimball led a nationwide search to collect original Jefferson
furnishings through loans, gifts, and purchases. The goal was to reshape
Monticello so it would appear much as did during Jefferson’s retirement years
from 1809-26.
Kimball consulted Jefferson’s drawings, letters, and other
documents to try to, as he said in 1923, “put the place back exactly in the
form” it had in “Jefferson’s lifetime.” He restricted his acquisitions
strictly to items that had belonged to Thomas Jefferson—no reproductions or
period pieces would be allowed in the house.
That effort, by necessity, included erasing all traces of
the nearly 90-year ownership of the Levy Family. “The Foundation did not want
[Monticello] to be a Levy shrine,” Fred Kuper, the Foundation’s first director,
said at the time.
So, not long after the Foundation took over, everything
having to do with the Levys was removed. That included bathrooms, a bath tub,
and a stairway installed by Jefferson Levy, along with two roof dormers he
added, along with an enormous amount of furniture and furnishings that Levy had
conveyed to the Foundation with the sale of the property.
Jefferson Levy’s sister, Amelia Mayhoff, the executor of his
estate (he died in 1924), lobbied in 1928 to have portraits she had inherited
of Jefferson and Uriah Levy that had long been hung in Monticello to be kept on
display in the house. “I have a great sentiment for Monticello, which was my
home in my childhood, girlhood and womanhood,” she wrote to Gibboney. “I also
think that it is only appropriate for some recognition to be given the family
that preserved Monticello for ninety-one years [in fact, it was 89 years] and
were in possession of it for a longer period than any other owner.”
Gibboney wrote to Fiske Kimball to get his input about the
paintings’ fate. “Naturally, we sympathize very much with Mrs. Mayhoff’s
feeling in the matter,” Kimball wrote back, “but the request she makes, I am
sorry to say, conflicts with the most fundamental principle on which the
Restoration Committee has been working.” That principle was keeping Monticello
purely Jeffersonian.
“Against every temptation to admit other objects into the
mansion which have been offered to us as gifts, we have rigidly adhered to the
principle of furnishing it exactly as it was in Jefferson’s lifetime, and of
accepting nothing except original Jefferson furnishings,” Kimbell went on to
say.
“Many other fine objects of his own period have been offered
to us, and temptation is sometimes very strong to accept these, but we have
felt that only Jefferson things should be [accepted].”
Rebuffed, Amelia Mayhoff donated the full-length oil
portrait of Uriah Levy in his Navy commodore’s uniform that hung in
Monticello’s parlor to the U.S. Navy. It is was on display for many years at
the Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis and is now in storage. She presented the
life-sized oil painting of Jefferson Levy to the New York Democratic Club as
her uncle was a long-time mover and shaker in the state’s Democrat Party,
having served three terms as a U.S. Congressman from Manhattan.
The end of the Levy era became official on Saturday,
November 17, 1928, when the Foundation held a public auction of Jefferson
Levy’s former Monticello furniture and furnishings in Charlottesville.
“We are making room at Monticello for more of the original relics and furnishings which belonged to Thomas Jefferson,” Gibboney said the day before the sale.
EVENTS & COMMERCE: I am scheduling events for the rest of the year and
early 2027, most of them on Lafayette: Idealist General and Saving Monticello.
I’m also doing talks, podcasts, and other events for all of my books. 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 of my books, go to https://bit.ly/BookOrdering You can read back issues of this newsletter at http://bit.ly/SMOnline
