@article{1377763,
      note = {Originally published: New York : Free Press, ©2001.},
      author = {Leepson, Marc,},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1377763},
      title = {Saving Monticello : the Levy family's epic quest to rescue  the house that Jefferson built /},
      publisher = {University of Virginia Press,},
      abstract = {"When Thomas Jefferson died on the Fourth of July 1826 --  the nation's fiftieth birthday -- he was more than $100,000  in debt. Forced to sell thousands of acres of his lands and  nearly all of his furniture and artwork, in 1831 his heirs  bid a final goodbye to Monticello itself. The house their  illustrious patriarch had lovingly designed in the Blue  Ridge Mountains of Virginia, his beloved "essay in  architecture," was sold to the highest bidder. "Saving  Monticello" offers the first complete post-Jefferson  history of this American icon and reveals the amazing story  of how one Jewish family saved the house that became a  family home to them for 89 years -longer than it ever was  to the Jeffersons. Levy discovered that Jefferson's mansion  had fallen into a miserable state of decay. Acquiring the  ruined estate and committing his considerable resources to  its renewal, he began what became a tumultuous nine-decade  relationship between his family and Jefferson's home. After  passing from Levy control at the time of the commodore's  death, Monticello fell once more into hard times, cattle  being housed on its first floor and grain in its once  elegant upper rooms. Again, remarkably, a member of the  Levy family came to the rescue. Uriah's nephew, the aptly  named Jefferson Monroe Levy, a three-term New York  congressman and wealthy real estate and stock speculator,  gained possession in 1879. After Jefferson Levy poured  hundreds of thousands of dollars into its repair and  upkeep, his chief reward was to face a vicious national  campaign, with anti-Semitic overtones, to expropriate the  house and turn it over to the government. Only after the  campaign had failed, with Levy declaring that he would sell  Monticello only when the White House itself was offered for  sale, did Levy relinquish it to the Thomas Jefferson  Foundation in 1923" --Adapted from Amazon.com.},
      recid = {1377763},
      pages = {303 pages :},
      address = {Charlottesville :},
      year = {2001},
}