The Mansion

Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball, Liar's Poker, other stuff) rented a mansion in New Orleans and wrote about the experience. He stretches it a bit to make it fit into the mortgage crisis, but the anecdotes about living in a too large home and its previous owners make some interesting reading.

Monroe went on to buy not only this house but also Rosecliffe, the Newport mansion used in the filming of The Great Gatsby. He was famous for telling anyone who would listen how much money he had given away to charity. After he donated a music building to Loyola University New Orleans, he insisted that the school mount a plaque on one of its walls with an inscription he wrote:

J. Edgar Monroe has donated to ­construction of this building $1,000,000.00 (one million) in cash. my secretary has strongly urged me to make a plaque of this donation so that the students of the music school and the public will know of this gift. father carter, president of loyola university, acknowledged receipt of four $250,000.00 checks, or $1,000,000.00. mr. monroe has given over one hundred million dollars ($100,000,000.00) to organized charity of which the largest share was given to loyola university.

When Monroe’s wife, Louise, died in 1989, the old man wrote her obituary. It opened with a paragraph or two about the deceased, but then quickly moved on to detail her husband’s incredible generosity. “Mr. Monroe is still living and is 92 years of age,” he wrote. “He has been very generous and has given over one hundred million dollars to organized charity...” and so on. He too died in the house a few years later.