Research Guides: Henry E. Huntington Papers and Related Collections: Additional Resources

Video

The Founder and the Future: Becoming Henry Huntington

History of The Huntington

Looking Afresh at the Bridgewater Library, a Jewel in The Huntington Crown

The Huntington Library at One Hundred and One: Eleven Million Items and Still Counting

Huntington Founders Day 2024: Foundations and Futures

Stories We Tell: Founders' Day at The Huntington 2023

Blog Posts

Huntington as Futurist

Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927), sitting at his desk. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Posted on Verso, August 30, 2019 by Huntington Staff

Arabella Huntington Traveling in Europe, ca. 1898. Arabella Huntington is dressed in black. Courtesy of the Hispanic Society of America, New York.

A Founder and a Year

George H. Kahn, Henry E. Huntington with a Grandchild, ca. August 1916, gelatin silver print, 7 ½ x 5 ½ in. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Posted on Verso, October 15, 2019 by James Glisson and Jennifer A. Watts

A Wealth of Information

Portraits of Arabella D. Huntington after her marriage to Henry include this image of her wearing a famous necklace known as the “Morgan pearls,” ca. 1915. The Hispanic Society of America, N.Y.

Posted on Verso, July 16, 2013 by Matt Stevens

Clara Huntington’s Lasting Tribute to Her Father

Clara Huntington and her father, Henry E. Huntington, ca. 1900. Detail from a group family portrait taken in Oneonta, New York, where both Henry and Clara were born. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Posted on Verso, May 27, 2020 by Suzanne Oatey

First Among Huntington Librarians

Huntington Library staff, July 1924. Cole is seated in the front row at the center. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Posted on Verso, April 12, 2012 by Peggy Park

Stories Aboard the Aquitania

Cover of a brochure for the RMS Aquitania, from Cunard Steamship Company, ca. 1925. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Posted on Verso, September 4, 2015 by Mario Einaudi and Diana W. Thompson

The Fads and Fancies of Arabella Huntington

Beyond the cover (and oak box) of this volume is a tantalizing tale about Arabella Huntington. Fads and Fancies of Representative Americans. New York: Town Topics Publishing Company (1905). The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Posted on Verso, December 20, 2013 by Anita Weaver

Going Public

Henry E. Huntington, 1907. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Posted on Verso, February 27, 2012 by Matt Stevens

Exhibitions

George R. Watson, Portrait of Henry E. Huntington on Loggia of San Marino Residence, April 1919; printed 1927. Gelatin silver print, 22 x 18 3/4 in. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Publications

The Art of Wealth by Shelley M. Bennett
ISBN: 9780873282536

Publication Date: 2013-05-11

"The Art of Wealth" provides a fresh perspective on the complicated mix of public and private motives and models that characterized art collecting and philanthropy in America in the early twentieth-century. The author focuses on four remarkable individuals: Collis Huntington, who started out as a peddler and went on to found a railroad empire; his second wife, Arabella, a woman of great intelligence and taste; her son, Archer, who devoted his life to creating and supporting museums; and Collis's nephew, Henry E. Huntington, who built up an extraordinary foundation and then gave it to the public as an enduring legacy.
The Founding of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery by James Thorpe; Robert R. Work; R. A. Billington
ISBN: 0873281055

Publication Date: 1969-01-01
Henry E. Huntington's Library of Libraries by Donald C. Dickinson
ISBN: 0873281535

Publication Date: 1995-06-01
Henry E. Huntington and the Creation of Southern California by William B. Friedricks
ISBN: 0814205534

Publication Date: 1991-01-01
Henry Edwards Huntington by James Thorpe
ISBN: 0520082540

Publication Date: 1994-08-18

A legendary book collector, a connoisseur of fine art, a horticulturist, and a philanthropist, Henry Edwards Huntington is perhaps best known as the founder of the world-renowned Huntington Library, Art Gallery, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. James Thorpe's comprehensive biography of Huntington tells the richly human story of the man who became America's greatest book collector and was a leading figure in the development of southern California. Henry Edwards Huntington was born in New York State in 1850. He began working at the age of 17, eventually moved to California, and in later years was hailed for his vision in developing the street railway system that created the structure of the Los Angeles area. Always a lover of books, Huntington acquired many spectacular volumes-among them the complete Gutenberg Bible on vellum and the library of the Earl of Bridgewater. He also built a splendid art collection and established a grand botanical garden on the grounds of the buildings that would house his art and books. Then, in an act of philanthropy seldom equaled, he gave these great treasures to the public. The intimate side of Huntington's life appears in these pages, too. Thorpe has culled a vast trove of private letters, diaries, and other documents that reveal Huntington's exceptional personal qualities. The author's well-rounded biography of this unassuming yet gifted American is also richly evocative of the times in which Henry Edwards Huntington lived.
Henry Edwards Huntington, His Life and His Collections by Selena A. Spurgeon
ISBN: 0873281373

Publication Date: 2002-01-01

A refreshing view of the lives of Henry Edwards and Arabella Huntington and the institution they created, drawn from original documents and letters in the Huntington archives. Written by a longtime Huntington docent, the book documents Huntington's business enterprises, including the development of the railroads in Southern California. It also records what we know about Arabella Huntington's mysterious background and first marriage to Collis Huntington. The purchase of the ranch in San Marino, the subsequent development of the library and art collections, and the creation of the gardens are also described. A final chapter, "Arrangements for the Future," provides insight into the way the founder's plans shaped the unique educational and cultural institution of today.
Nineteen Nineteen by James Glisson; Jennifer A. Watts; Karen R. Lawrence
ISBN: 9780873282680

Publication Date: 2019-08-21

Race riots. Labor strikes. Women's battle for the vote. The aftermath of the Great War. The transformative events and harsh realities of the year 1919 still reverberate a century later. Nineteen Nineteen, published to accompany a centennial exhibition of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, explores the institution and its founding through the lens of this single, tumultuous year. The fully illustrated catalog features works from The Huntington's vast collections of books, manuscripts, photographs, ephemera, and art, many of them never exhibited or published before. Highlights include German propaganda posters, labor manifestos, personal mementos from suffrage campaigns, firsthand chronicles of World War I and the papers of T.E. Lawrence (better known as "Lawrence of Arabia"). Artworks by Abraham Walkowitz, John Singer Sargent, Joseph Pennell, Earl Horter, and David Bomberg respond to the unsettling experience of modern life and to a postwar world desperately trying to piece its shards back together.

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Henry E. Huntington Papers and Related Collections

LIBRARY INFORMATION

Video

Blog Posts

Huntington as Futurist

A Founder and a Year

A Wealth of Information

Clara Huntington’s Lasting Tribute to Her Father

First Among Huntington Librarians

Stories Aboard the Aquitania

The Fads and Fancies of Arabella Huntington

Going Public

Exhibitions

1919, the Year of The Huntington's Founding, is Subject of Sweeping Centennial Exhibition

Nineteen Nineteen

Cultivating California: Founding Families of the San Marino Ranch

Welcome to Los Robles Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

The Belle of San Marino: Introducing Arabella Huntington

Centennial Family Tour

Publications