Visitor's Guide

Huntington Main Entrance

Visitor's Guide

Welcome to The Huntington, one of the world’s
great cultural, research, and educational centers.

A private, non-profit institution, The Huntington was founded in 1919 by Henry E. Huntington, an exceptional businessman who built a financial empire that included railroad companies, utilities, and real estate holdings in Southern California.

Huntington was also a man of vision – with a special interest in books, art, and gardens. During his lifetime, he amassed the core of one of the finest research libraries in the world, established a splendid art collection, and created an array of botanical gardens with plants from a geographic range spanning the globe.

These three distinct facets of The Huntington are linked by a devotion to research, education, and beauty.

Library
The Library’s collection of rare books and manuscripts in the fields of British and American history and literature is nothing short of extraordinary. For qualified scholars, the Huntington is one of the largest and most complete research libraries in the United States in its fields of specialization. For the general public, the Library has on display some of the finest rare books and manuscripts of Anglo-American civilization. Altogether, there are about six million items.

Among the treasures for research and exhibition are the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a Gutenberg Bible on vellum, the double-elephant folio edition of Audubon’s Birds of America, and a world-class collection of the early editions of Shakespeare’s works.

The Huntington also is among the nation’s most important centers for the study of the American West, with an unsurpassed collection of materials that span the full range of American western settlement, including the overland pioneer experience, the Gold Rush, and the development of Southern California.

The Munger Research Center, the newest addition to the Library structure, adds 90,000 square feet of space for scholars and staff, preservation, conservation, and storage.

Art Collections
The Art Collections are distinguished by their specialized character and elegant settings in three separate galleries on the Huntington grounds. A fourth space, the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery, hosts changing exhibitions.

The Huntington Gallery, originally the Huntington residence, contains one of the most comprehensive collections in this country of eighteenth and nineteenth century British and French art. It serves as home to Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy and Lawrence’s Pinkie. (Note: these works are temporarily housed in the Erburu Gallery while the Huntington Gallery undergoes renovation.)

The Virginia Steele Scott Gallery of American Art brings together American paintings from the 1730s to the 1930s, including works by John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt, and a permanent exhibition devoted to the work of early twentieth-century Pasadena architects Charles and Henry Greene. The Lois and Robert F. Erburu Gallery, ultimately built to house the expanding collection of American art, currently features the Huntington's distinguished collection of European art including 18th-century full-length British portraits by Reynolds, Gainsborough and Lawrence as well as key elements of the British sculpture and French art collections.

The Arabella Huntington Memorial Collection is housed in the west wing of the Library and features Renaissance paintings and eighteenth-century French sculpture, tapestries, porcelain, and furniture.

Botanical Gardens
The Botanical Gardens are an ever-changing exhibition of color and a constant delight. Covering 120 acres, more than a dozen specialized gardens are arranged within a park-like landscape of rolling lawns. Among the most remarkable are the Desert Garden, the Japanese Garden, and the Rose Garden. The camellia collection is one of the largest in the country. Other important botanical attractions include the Subtropical, Herb, Jungle, and Palm gardens.

To the north of the Scott Gallery sits the Botanical Education Center, featuring the Helen and Peter Bing Children’s Garden,the Teaching Greenhouse, and the Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science. The Conservatory provides children and families with exhibits designed to capture the imagination, engage the senses, and teach some of the fundamentals of botany. The Children’s Garden is most suitable for kids ages 2-7; the Conservatory for middle-school-age students.

Henry & Arabella Huntington
Henry Edwards Huntington was born in 1850 in Oneonta, New York. In 1872 he went to work for his uncle, Collis P. Huntington, one of the owners of the Central Pacific Railroad. Twenty years later Huntington moved to San Francisco at his uncle’s request to share management of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Enroute to San Francisco he visited the J. DeBarth Shorb estate, “San Marino,” which he later purchased. Today the estate is home to his collections.

In 1902, Huntington moved his business operations to Los Angeles, where he greatly expanded the existing electric railway lines, creating an extensive inter-urban system providing the transportation necessary to encourage population growth. As a result of the railway linkages and the development of the property adjacent to the lines, the population of the region tripled between 1900 and 1910. Huntington’s business interests continued to grow particularly in the areas of water, power, and land development; at one time he served on as many as sixty corporate boards throughout the United States.

At the age of sixty he announced his decision to retire in order to devote time to his book and art collections and the landscaping of the 600-acre ranch. He operated the ranch as a commercial enterprise for several years, later selling more than half the acreage. In 1910 the large Beaux Arts mansion (now the Huntington Gallery), designed by architect Myron Hunt, was completed.

In 1913, Huntington married Arabella Duval Huntington, the widow of his uncle Collis. She was Henry’s age and shared his interests in collecting. As one of the most important art collectors of her generation, she was highly influential in the development of the art collection now displayed in the former mansion.

Huntington was one of the country’s most prominent collectors of rare books and manuscripts. In 1920 the library building was completed to house his outstanding collection.

In 1919, Henry and Arabella Huntington signed the indenture that transferred their San Marino property and collections to a non-profit educational trust, creating The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, which hosts more than 500,000 visitors each year.

Henry E. Huntington died in 1927; Arabella predeceased him by three years. Both are buried in the mausoleum on the property, designed by John Russell Pope. Pope used the design as a prototype for the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.