Huntington, Henry Edwards 1850-1927

HUNTINGTON, HENRY EDWARDS 1850-1927

Streetcar magnate, railroad executive, financier

Apprentice

Henry Edwards Huntington was born to Solon and Harriet Huntington in Oneonta, New York, in 1850. Huntington attended a local public school, finishing at age seventeen. He traveled in 1869 to Cohoes, New York, to work for his brother-in-law at a hardware store. His uncle Collis Huntington was a successful businessman living in New York City, and in 1870 Henry (known as Edward to intimates) moved there to find work. After a one-year stint working as a hardware wholesaler, Huntington accepted the first of many business opportunities from his Uncle Collis. He moved to Coalsmouth, West Virginia, and managed a sawmill owned by his uncle. In 1873 Huntington married Mary Prentice and bought half of the sawmill from his uncle, the other half having been purchased by Gen. Richard Franchot, a Civil War veteran and associate of Collis Huntington. Henry Huntington continued to run the mill, which served as his apprenticeship as a businessman.

Railroad Man

In 1881 Collis Huntington offered his nephew a new position overseeing track expansion for the Chesapeake, Ohio and South Western Railroad Company. Huntington accepted the job. He would spend the rest of his working days involved with railroad construction and management. He moved to Kentucky and worked the next four years as head of railroad construction. In 1885 he became superintendent of the Kentucky Central Railroad Company, which offered him the chance of managing the operation. The company was only modestly successful, though Huntington did supervise the construction of an important railroad bridge between Covington, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio. The position served as a preparatory course for the next phase of Huntington's career. By 1891 Collis Huntington had focused on the West, where he had speculated shortly after the Gold Rush of 1849. He was a major owner of the Southern Pacific Railroad, the massive monopoly that controlled most of the transportation in booming California. In 1892 Huntington traveled to San Francisco to become the first assistant to the president of Southern Pacific. The president was Collis Huntington.

California

The 1890s were a difficult time for the Southern Pacific Railroad. The company had become a symbol of corporate monopoly and greedy owners battling one another for control. Collis Huntington was at the center of the controversy, thus putting Henry Huntington in a difficult situation upon arrival. He was well received, however, thanks to his genial personality and strong work ethic. Working for the Southern Pacific was a high profile job, but Huntington even managed to impress a skeptical San Francisco press. He survived the deep depression of 1893 and a massive strike by railroad workers in 1894, standing up to and triumphing over the union. He also began traveling extensively throughout California. He was enamored of the Golden State, especially the south, which was still relatively undeveloped. Los Angeles did double in population between 1890 and 1900, from fifty thousand to one hundred thousand, but Huntington saw the potential of the Los Angeles basin and would have a huge impact on its growth. By 1895 and 1896 southern California was seen as Huntington's "hobby," as he began looking to invest. Electric rail had arrived in American cities during the 1880s, and Huntington was deeply impressed by San Francisco's trolley-car system and how it was changing the face of urban life as well as advancing growth of the city's environs. In 1898, now determined to move to southern California, Huntington purchased the Los Angeles Railway Company, a bankrupt rail company that had been incorporated in 1895. In January 1899 he resigned as director of the Southern Pacific. He was elected as the first vice president of the railroad in June of that year, but refused the position. In August 1899 Collis Huntington died. He left Henry a large portion of his massive fortune with the expectation that he would become the president of the Southern Pacific. Huntington wanted the presidency and was bitterly disappointed when it was instead given to E. H. Harriman. He sold out his portion of the railroad and moved south permanently, determined to build an urban transit system.

Los Angeles

Huntington did not invest heavily in an electric rail system around Los Angeles in order to sell fares to the locals. Railroads were not the end but a means to an end. That end was real estate development. Huntington bought choice, undeveloped land and used the rail system in order to create communities that would grow, bringing people to purchase his land. He would even supply water to the new communities at a loss in order to entice buyers of his lucrative real estate properties. His Pacific Electric Railway Company covered southern California with railroad tracks in the first ten years of the twentieth century. In 1898 the Los Angeles Railway had some fifty miles of track laid. By 1910 there were 918 miles of track—350 in the city proper and 568 "interurban," connecting Los Angeles to nearby suburbs—crisscrossing the Los Angeles basin. The big red trolley cars became famous for their speed and reliability. By 1910 it was the best urban rail system in the world. Huntington laid track with remarkable speed, leading to equally remarkable growth in the small rural areas around Los Angeles. Rail lines connected Huntington Beach, Whittier, Pomona, San Pedro, Newport, Sierra Madre, Covina, Watts, Redondo, Pasadena, Altadena, Santa Monica, San Bernardino, and other towns with Los Angeles. Huntington was hailed as a hero in the Los Angeles press, and towns would give him depots and land for rail lines for nothing in order to be connected. Huntington was not only changing the face of Los Angeles, but he was changing the way people viewed urban and suburban life. California had among its attributes an abundance of open land. Huntington's rail lines and streetcar suburbs offered people a way to escape life in the crowded cities while still being able to work in the city. The city and its surrounding area boomed. Between 1900 and 1910 the population of Los Angeles more than tripled from 102,000 to 319,000. The figure would be at 500,000 before 1920. Huntington's fortune also boomed because of his extensive landholdings and their subsequent sales.

The Library

In 1910 Huntington sold the interurban lines of the Pacific Electric to the Southern Pacific. He retained control of the city lines in Los Angeles, but many saw the change as a disaster. "A calamity has befallen Los Angeles in this change," wrote the Los Angeles Express. Some worried that Huntington had lost interest in southern California. The fears were unfounded. Huntington shifted his focus to other speculations. His library became a primary concern. He had always been a great buyer of books, but after 1910, with his astounding wealth, he began to accumulate an enormous library. He had a preference for books and manuscripts from England and the United States and for the works of English painters. The collection was initially kept at his house in New York and then at his estate in San Marino. The estate became in 1919 the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, with five trustees appointed to care for it. It was deeded to the state of California after Huntington's death following prostate surgery in 1927. At the time, the collection was valued at $30 million, and an endowment of $8 million was left for upkeep of the library. Huntington was mourned by the city he had helped build. He had written in a letter in 1906 that "I must confess that the progress and prosperity of Los Angeles and its environs is quite a hobby of mine. I feel myself vitally interested in it, as I indeed am and must be—proud of it, in fact … I do want to be known as one of the good people who are responsible for it, who believe in it, and who are ready to pin their money to their faith every time."

Sources:

Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985);

James Thorpe, Henry Edwards Huntington: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).