Henry E Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino

From Los Angeles the way to this museum complex (1151 Oxford Road, San Marino) is via the Pasadena Freeway (exit for Altadena/Arroyo), or by taking bus no. 432, but this service is not very frequent.

As unusual as the museum itself is its history. Like so many others, Collis Huntington, a small shopkeeper in Oneonta in New York State, left the town of his birth in 1849 to go in search of gold in distant California.

Picture - Traditional Japanese Tea House at the Huntington Library, San Marino.

Picture - The lush botanical gardens at the Henry E Huntington Library and Art Gallery in San Marino.

Picture - Zen garden at the Huntington Library, San Marino.

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Henry E Huntington Library and Art Gallery Map

Important Information:

Official site: www.huntington.org

Address: 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 91108-1218, United States

Opening hours: May 25 to Sep 7: 10:30am-4:30pm; Closed: Tue
Sep 8 to May 24: 12pm-4:30pm; Sun: 10:30am-4:30pm; Sat: 10:30am-4:30pm; Closed: Tue

Always closed on: New Year's Day (Jan 1), Memorial Day - USA (last Monday, May), American Independance Day (Jul 4), Labor Day - USA (1st Monday, Sep), Thanksgiving - USA (4th Thursday, Nov), Christmas - Christian (Dec 25), Christmas Eve - Christian (Dec 24), Easter - Christian

Entrance fee in USD: Adult $20.00, Senior over 65 $15.00, Child 18 & under $10.00, Child 11 & under $6.00, Child 5 & under FREE

Useful tips: Admission is free on the first Thursday of every month. Informal photography and video taping is permitted throughout the institution. Flashbulbs and tripods may not be used in buildings. Professional or commercial photography by appointment only. You are recommended to arrange Sunday visits by telephone because the crush is particularly heavy on that day. There is a guided tour through the Botanical Gardens every day at 1 pm. June to August open 10:30 - 16:30 Tuesday - Sunday

Disability Access: Full facilities for persons with disabilities.

Facilities: Gift shop, Restaurant or food service, Wheelchair loan or rental

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However, it was not gold which made him a very rich man, but the fact that he went into railway construction at the right time. A large part of his fortune went directly to his nephew Henry, who also inherited the rest through marriage - he married Arabella, his uncle's widow. With this money Henry bought a 500 acre/200 hectare ranch in San Marino - today it is a township of elegant villas with about 13,000 inhabitants - and in the years 1909 to 1911 he built his palace-like villa with its huge garden. While Arabella concerned herself mainly with the acquisition of European, especially English, works of art, Henry devoted himself completely to the library, which today boasts one of the most important manuscript collections of English and American history in the world, and to laying out the garden. Henry Huntington was no idler; he founded the Pacific Electric Railway Co., which ran the whole tramway network in Los Angeles and the county and as the result of clever purchases he became the biggest landowner in southern California. By the time of his death in 1929 he had considerably increased the fortune he had inherited.

In 1919 he donated the whole of his land and estates in San Marino to the library, gallery and garden. At the same time he founded an ancillary research institute with an initial capital of 10.5 million dollars.

Related Attractions

Huntington Library - Huntington Botanical Gardens

If the treasures in the museum and gallery at the Huntington Library were the only things to see, they would be quite sufficient to fill the three and a half hours allowed to visitors each day. However, the beauties of nature displayed in the gardens easily match the aesthetic pleasures experienced inside the building. Each of the gardens, here blended into a whole, will attract its own admirers. Most visitors, however, make for the Japanese garden which, with its red bridge, traditional Japanese five-roomed house, the Ikebana house, traditional Bonsai trees and little Zen Garden, inspires them just to sit and meditate.

Other parts of the grounds are: the Herb Garden, the Shakespeare Garden with plants such as existed in the poet's time, the Desert Garden and - in direct contrast - the Jungle Garden, the Rose Garden and two Camellia Gardens, the Palm Garden and the Subtropical Garden and finally, just behind the mausoleum where the Huntingtons lie buried, the Orange Grove.

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Huntington Library - Literary Art Treasures

The treasures of the Huntington Library such as the Ellesmere Manuscript from Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" dating from 1410, and, in the same display cabinet, numerous superbly illuminated books of hours dating from the Middle Ages, are unique. You can then admire a two-volume Johannes Gutenberg bible, printed on parchment in 1455. Not far away can be seen some manuscript pages from Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, which he wrote between 1771 and 1790, leaving a half of each page empty for later amendments and corrections. Also displayed are the completely illegible "Forests" manuscript by Henry Thoreaus, letters by George Washington and Mark Twain, the Shakespeare Folio Edition, a copy of the large-format original edition of Audobon's "Birds of America" and much more. There are reading and work rooms available to academics, who have the choice of nearly four million items.

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Virginia Steele Scott Gallery

The works of art at the Huntington Library are no longer housed solely in the villa, but also in a new building erected specially for the purpose, the Virginia Steele Scott Gallery. The superb collection is devoted mainly to American art, but also includes important English works of art of the 18th and 19th centuries, including "Blue Boy", Thomas Gainsborough's most famous painting, and the scarcely less famous "Pinkie" by Thomas Lawrence. Sir Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, Sir Henry Raeburn are all represented, as well as works by the French artists Fragonard, Houdon, Baptiste Greuze and François Hubert Drouais; particular mention should be made of the pictures of children which were obviously Arabella's favorite.

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Huntington Library - Memorial Collection

The Arabella Huntington Memorial Collection, containing predominantly French sculptures from the 18th century, tapestries, porcelain and furniture from the same period, is housed in the west wing of the library.

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