The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

Henry Edwards Huntington (1850-1927) built substantial fortunes through railroad and real-estate operations in Southern California during the late 19th and early 20th centuries — he was the principal developer of the Pacific Electric Railway system that defined Southern California suburban development during that era, and his real-estate operations developed substantial portions of what is now the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Huntington's wealth, combined with his serious engagement with rare-book collecting and art collecting, allowed him to assemble one of the most substantial private cultural collections in American history during the early 20th century.

Arabella Huntington (1851-1924), Henry's second wife, brought substantial additional art-collecting depth — particularly in European decorative arts and 18th-century portraiture — to the joint collecting program. The combination of their respective collecting interests produced a collection of remarkable depth across rare books, manuscripts, paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, and the broader range of fine and decorative arts that defined major early-20th-century private collecting.

The 120-acre San Marino estate served as the Huntingtons' Southern California home and the principal display venue for the growing collection. Henry's 1927 will established the institution as a public-access research library and museum, with Arabella's earlier 1924 death having already established the broad framework for converting the private estate into the public institution. The institution opened to public access in 1928 and has operated continuously since, with substantial growth and expansion of both the collections and the public-access infrastructure across the subsequent century.

The Huntington Library's collections include approximately 11 million items spanning rare books, manuscripts, photographs, archival materials, and various other research holdings. The collections are particularly strong in British and American history and literature, with major holdings in the medieval and Renaissance periods extending through the contemporary era. The combination of breadth and depth produces one of the most substantial research libraries in the United States outside the major university research libraries.

Specific rare-book highlights include one of the eleven complete Gutenberg Bibles on vellum (one of approximately 48 surviving copies in any form), the Ellesmere manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (one of the most important Chaucer manuscripts), an original double-elephant folio Audubon Birds of America (one of approximately 120 complete sets), the Bay Psalm Book (the first book printed in British North America), and substantial holdings of Shakespeare First Folios and other major Shakespeare editions. The combination of these substantial individual treasures plus the broader collection depth produces a research library of substantial international significance.

The library's exhibition gallery rotates substantial selections from the collection for public display. Recent and ongoing exhibitions have included substantial displays of medieval illuminated manuscripts, major works from the American colonial period, Civil War-era American documents, substantial Shakespeare-related displays, and various other thematic presentations drawing on the substantial collection depth. The exhibition program substantially extends what casual visitors can engage with beyond just the headline items like the Gutenberg Bible.

The art collection's most famous holdings are the iconic late-18th-century English portraits — Thomas Gainsborough's 'The Blue Boy' (c. 1770) and Thomas Lawrence's 'Pinkie' (1794) — which face each other across the main gallery in the Huntington Art Gallery (housed in the former Huntington family residence). The two paintings are among the most-recognized British portraits in the world, with The Blue Boy in particular functioning as one of the visual icons of British 18th-century portraiture. Both paintings have been at the Huntington since Henry Huntington's original 1921 acquisition of The Blue Boy.

Beyond the famous English portraits, the European art collection includes substantial holdings of 18th-century English portraiture and landscape painting (Reynolds, Constable, Turner, Romney), European decorative arts including substantial French 18th-century furniture and porcelain collections, Renaissance and Baroque paintings from various European traditions, and substantial sculpture holdings spanning multiple traditions and periods. The European collection is substantial but more specialized than the broader European holdings at neighboring institutions like the Norton Simon Museum.

The American art holdings — displayed in the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries — provide one of the more substantial American art collections in the Western United States. Major American paintings include works by John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Mary Cassatt, Edward Hopper, John Singer Sargent, Frederic Edwin Church, and substantially every other major name in the American art-historical canon. The American galleries provide substantial chronological coverage from the colonial period through the mid-20th century, complementing the European focus of the main Huntington Art Gallery. The combination of European, American, and decorative-arts holdings makes the Huntington art museum complete in ways that single-focus museums simply cannot match.