David Leavitt (banker)

New York City banker David Leavitt, ca. 1820, Samuel Lovett Waldo, Brooklyn Museum of Art

David Leavitt (August 29, 1791 – December 30, 1879) was an early New York City banker and financier. As president of the American Exchange Bank of New York during the Financial Panic of 1837[1] he represented bondholders of the nascent Illinois and Michigan Canal, allowing completion of the historic canal linking the Midwest with the East Coast.[2] For his role in helping prevent the collapse of the canal scheme, Chicago authorities named Leavitt Street after the financier.[3] Leavitt was also an early art collector, and many of the artist Emanuel Leutze's paintings, including that of Washington at Valley Forge, were initially in Leavitt's collection housed at his Great Barrington, Massachusetts estate.[4]

  1. ^ A Brief Popular Account of All the Financial Panics and Commercial Revulsions in the United States, Members of the New York Press, J.C. Haney, New York, 1857
  2. ^ Canals for a Nation: The Canal Era in the United States, 1790–1860, Ronald E. Shaw, The University Press of Kentucky, 1990 ISBN 978-0-8131-0815-5.
  3. ^ Chicago: Its History and Its Builders, Vol. III, J. Seymour Currey, S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, Chicago, Ill., 1918
  4. ^ Mrs. Hopkins's Recent Art Purchase, from the San Francisco Bulletin, The New York Times, December 18, 1881