Henry E. Huntington

The "Huntington Mansion" from 1915 is now the main building of the Huntington Library Museum.

Henry Edwards Huntington (* 27. February 1850 in Oneonta , New York ; † 23. May 1927 in Philadelphia ) was an American railroad - Tycoon and an important collector of art and rare books.

Life

Henry E. Huntington was the nephew of Collis P. Huntington , one of the "Big Four" who founded the Central Pacific Railroad . This railroad company was one of two companies that completed the United States' first transcontinental rail link in 1869 . Huntington initially held several leadership positions in his uncle's company. After Collis P. Huntington's death, Henry E. Huntington followed as Managing Director of Collis Huntington at Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Virginia . He married his widow Arabella Huntington in 1913 after the previous divorce from his first wife, Mary Alice Prentice, a close relative in 1910. He had four children from his first marriage; his second marriage was childless.

In competition with his uncle's company, the Southern Pacific Railroad , Huntington bought the Los Angeles Railway narrow-gauge tram system in 1889 . In 1901 he supplemented the network with a standard-gauge light rail system in the form of the Pacific Electric Railway . The success of this network was based on the growing need for round-the-clock regional passenger transport that existing railroad lines could not meet, as well as the construction boom in Southern California in the early 20th century with new settlements in remote parts of the Los Angeles Basin (e.g. Huntington Beach , a new town that could only be reached by rail by the Pacific Electric Railway ). In 1905 Huntington, A. Kingsley Macomber, and William R. Staats established Oak Knoll, west of Huntington's San Marino estate in the oak-covered hills of Pasadena . The new tram connections made it easier for people to travel to the center of Los Angeles and created new suburbs. In 1902 the network was expanded by acquiring the Mount Lowe Scenic Railway above Altadena in the San Gabriel Mountains .

In 1906 Huntington founded the Huntington Park Association with Frank Augustus Miller, owner of the Mission Inn Hotel , and Charles M. Loring, who bought nearby Mount Rubidoux in Riverside , built a road to the crest and parked the area for the new one City of Riverside developed. The road was completed in February 1907. The extensive estates were handed over to the town of Riverside by the heirs of Frank Miller in the following decades. Today the mountain is a 0.65 km² city park.

In 1910, Huntington's tram network reached a length of 2,100 km. At the time of its greatest expansion, it operated more than 20 tram lines, for which 1,250 trams ran. They ran in downtown Los Angeles and the surrounding neighborhoods such as Echo Park , Westlake , Hancock Park , Exposition Park , West Adams , Vernon , Boyle Heights, and Lincoln Heights .

Huntington retired from active business in 1916. He was an art collector and a great patron of the city of Los Angeles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He died in Philadelphia in 1927 during surgery. He was buried in California. His tomb is in the Huntington Library Gardens in Pasadena.

literature

• Zona Gale: Frank Miller of the Mission Inn . New York 1938.
• DeWitt V. Hutchings: The Story of Mount Rubidoux, Riverside, California .
• NN: Henry E. Huntington . In: Homepage of The Electronic Railway Historical Association of Southern California .

Remarks

1. ↑ So the article in the English language Wikipedia. According to genealogy records [sic] he died in San Marino (California) .
2. ↑ So the article in the English language Wikipedia. According to genealogy records [sic] he died in San Marino (California) .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Portrait photo on USC digital library.
2. ^ Death records online .
3. ↑ Gale, pp. 155-156.
4. ↑ Hutchings, p. (11).
5. ^ NN: Henry E. Huntington .