Henry Edwards Huntington (February 27, 1850, Oneonta, New York–May 23, 1927,Philadelphia) was a railroad magnate and collector of art and rare books.^[1]

[edit] Life in Southern California

Henry E. Huntington was the nephew of Collis P. Huntington, one of The Big Four, the men instrumental in the creation of the transcontinental railway. Huntington held several executive positions working alongside his uncle with the Southern Pacific Railway. After Collis P. Huntington's death, Henry E. Huntington assumed Collis Huntington's leadership role with Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Virginia, and married his widow Arabella Huntington.

In 1898, Huntington purchased the narrow gauge, city oriented Los Angeles Railway (LARy) known colloquially as the 'Yellow Car' system. In 1901 Huntington formed the sprawling interurban, standard gauge Pacific Electric Railway (the PE), known more familiarly as the 'Red Car' system, centered at 6th and Main Streets in Los Angeles. By 1910, the Huntington trolley systems stretched over approximately 1300 miles of southern California.^[2] At its most robust size, the system contained over 20 streetcar lines and 1,250 trolleys, most running through the core of Los Angeles and serving such nearby neighborhoods as Echo Park, Westlake, Hancock Park, Exposition Park, West Adams, the Crenshaw district, Vernon, Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights; and included the 1902 acquisition of the Mount Lowe Railway.^[3]

In 1905, Huntington, A. Kingsley Macomber and William R. Staats developed the Oak Knoll subdivision in the rolling, oak-covered terrain between Pasadena and San Marino.

The Huntington Mansion, 1915; now the centerpiece of the Huntington Library.

Huntington retired from active business in 1916. He died in Philadelphia, while undergoing surgery in 1927, and is interred at the Huntington Library, Art Gallery and Botanical Gardens, San Marino.^[4]

[edit] Legacy

His legacy includes the cities of Huntington Beach and Huntington Park, the Huntington Library, the Huntington Memorial Library in Oneonta, NY,^[5] Huntington Hospital, Henry E. Huntington Middle School, and Huntington Drive, a grand boulevard whose median served as a main east-west artery of the Pacific Electric Railroad. Huntington Park on the James River in Newport News, Virginia at the foot of the community's landmark James River Bridge was named in his honor.

Also to his name was the Huntington Hotel (1910), later the Huntington Sheraton, the Huntington Ritz-Carlton and the Langham Huntington, built on the ridge line of the Raymond Dyke, a geological fault line at the southmost edge of Pasadena. The magnificent monument of a building was bought out in the late 1980s and probably would have remained if it weren't for the fact that the unusual structure was completely built of unreinforced concrete. Its construction dated back to 1910 as the Wentworth Hotel at a a time when construction standards were not as strict. The hotel has been replaced by the equally magnificent Ritz-Carlton, now the Langham-Huntington.

The world famous art collections at San Marino include masterpieces of British 18th century painting which Huntington acquired through the dealer Sir Joseph Duveen, including Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy and Sir Thomas Lawrence's Pinkie, French 18th century tapestries, porcelain and furniture. His portrait, and that of his wife Arabella, were painted by Sir Oswald Birley in the 1920s and hang in the former Huntington mansion, now the art gallery.

Portraits of Huntington were also painted by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury; a full-length, based on a photograph, is at the Howard Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, and two seated versions, a small one of which was the property of Huntington's son-in-law John Metcalf, and a larger one which was engraved by an artist called Witherspoon in 1928.

[edit] References

• Friedricks, William B., 1992, Henry E. Huntington and the Creation of Southern California,Ohio State University, ISBN 978-0814205532
• Dickinson, Donald C., 1995,Henry E. Huntington's Library of Libraries, Huntington Library Press,ISBN 978-0873281539
• Arabelle Huntington at Find A Grave