L. Brooks Leavitt

L. Brooks Leavitt (1878–1941) was an investment banker and antiquarian book collector who served as an of Bowdoin College, to whose library he donated part of his collection of rare books and manuscripts. Born in Wilton, Maine, to a father who was a stagecoach driver who died when Leavitt was young, Brooks Leavitt was an aesthete turned banker whom Maine's poet laureate later eulogized at his funeral.

Leon Brooks Leavitt was born to William Newcomb Leavitt and Ada Idela (Russell) Leavitt in Wilton, Maine, on April 3, 1878. Leavitt's father dropped dead of a heart attack when Brooks Leavitt was attending Wilton Academy. Leavitt subsequently attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where he became a voracious reader, and to which he later helped send his younger brother Russell by paying his tuition.

On graduating, Leavitt worked briefly as the principal of a Farmington, Maine high school, and then went to work for the United States Census Bureau. Leavitt subsequently attended George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., and practiced law briefly in New York City, before joining the Wall Street investment banking firm of Bertram, Griscom & Company.

Within a few years, Leavitt joined the investment banking firm of Paine, Webber & Co., where he worked at the firm's headquarters on Wall Street in Manhattan. Leavitt became a bond specialist, and was later one of the partners in charge of the company. While working at Paine Webber, Leavitt indulged his true loves – literature, oriental carpets and the companionship of artists and writers of the day. Having eventually made a fortune on Wall Street, Leavitt retired back to his beloved Maine.

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