The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California, United States

The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens (short as The Huntington), is a collections-based educational and research institution established by Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) and Arabella Huntington (1851–1924) and located in San Marino, California, United States. The Huntington is a research and cultural center surrounded by 120 acres spread across 12 specialized gardens.

Originally the private estate of railroad magnate Henry Huntington, it is one of Southern California’s must-see cultural destinations with magnificent collections of rare books, manuscripts, and famous works of art including Gainsborough’s “The Blue Boy,” Mary Cassatt’s “Breakfast in Bed,” a Gutenberg Bible, an illuminated manuscript of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and a First Folio edition of Shakespeare.

The main library, which holds more than six million items—much of it open only to researchers. Some of its most notable holdings, among them a Gutenberg Bible and the earliest known edition of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, are always on display in the adjoining exhibition hall, alongside regular themed temporary shows.

The art collection is almost as notable as the library’s collection. In addition to the library, the institution houses an extensive art collection with a focus on 18th- and 19th-century European art and 17th- to mid-20th-century American art. Built in 1910, the main house is home to a very impressive collection of British art, which includes Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy alongside works by Blake, Reynolds and Turner. And over in the newer Scott and Erburu Galleries, you’ll find a selection of American paintings.

The Huntington’s highlights are outdoors in its vast jigsaw of botanical gardens, arguably the most glorious in the entire Los Angeles region. The property also includes approximately 120 acres (49 ha) of specialized botanical landscaped gardens, most notably the “Japanese Garden”, the “Desert Garden”, and the “Chinese Garden” (Liu Fang Yuan).

The 207 acres of gardens, 120 acres of which are open to the public, are divided into a variety of themes: the Desert Garden, now a century old, is packed with cacti and other succulents; the Shakespeare Garden evokes a kind of Englishness rarely seen in England these days; the Children’s Garden is a delightful mix of educational features and entertaining diversions; and the Japanese garden is quietly, unassumingly magical.

The Garden of Flowing Fragrance Chinese Garden at the world-renowned Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Garden is the largest Chinese garden to be built outside China. Brought to life by BrightView in collaboration with Suzhou Garden Development Company, the Garden of Flowing Fragrance spans over 12 acres. The first phase of the project consisted of 3.5-acres of a lake, waterfall, stream, and five bridges. The Summer Garden pavilions dwell in the remaining acreage where a teahouse, tea shop, and many intricately covered walkways were also constructed by the BrightView-led multi-cultural team.

History
As a landowner, Henry Edwards Huntington (1850–1927) played a major role in the growth of Southern California. Huntington was born in 1850, in Oneonta, New York, and was the nephew and heir of Collis P. Huntington (1821–1900), one of the famous “Big Four” railroad tycoons of 19th century California history.

1913, he relocating from the financial and political center of Northern California, San Francisco, to the state’s newer southern major metropolis, Los Angeles. He purchased a property of more than 500 acres (202 ha) that was then known as the “San Marino Ranch” and went on to purchase other large tracts of land in the Pasadena and Los Angeles areas of Los Angeles County for urban and suburban development. As president of the Pacific Electric Railway Company, the regional streetcar and public transit system for the Los Angeles metropolitan area and southern California and also of the Los Angeles Railway Company, (later the Southern California Railway), he spearheaded urban and regional transportation efforts to link together far-flung communities, supporting growth of those communities as well as promoting commerce, recreation and tourism. He was one of the founders of the City of San Marino, incorporated in 1913.

Huntington’s interest in art was influenced in large part by his second wife, Arabella Huntington (1851–1924), and with art experts to guide him, he benefited from a post-World War I European market that was “ready to sell almost anything”. Before his death in 1927, Huntington amassed “far and away the greatest group of 18th-century British portraits ever assembled by any one man”. In accordance with Huntington’s will, the collection, then worth $50 million, was opened to the public in 1928.

The Huntington opened publicly to visitors in 1928 and has grown over the past century to become an internationally renowned collections-based nonprofit institution that supports and promotes the humanities, the arts, and botanical science. The Huntington aspires to be a welcoming place for all and is committed to fully embracing diversity among staff, visitors, curators, and scholars, and to preserving, building, and sharing its collections with a diverse and global community.

Organization
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens is a collections-based research and educational institution serving scholars and the general public.

Library
The Huntington Library is one of the world’s great independent research libraries, with some 11 million items spanning the 11th to the 21st century. These extraordinary and diverse materials are centered on 14 intersecting collection strengths: American history; architecture; British history; early printed books; Hispanic history and culture; history of science, medicine, and technology; literature in English; maps and atlases; medieval manuscripts; prints, posters, and ephemera; photography; Pacific Rim history and culture; California history and culture; and history of the American West.

The library building was designed in 1920 by the southern California architect Myron Hunt in the Mediterranean Revival style. Hunt’s previous commissions for Mr. and Mrs. Huntington included the Huntington’s residence in San Marino in 1909, and the Huntington Hotel in 1914.

The library contains a substantial collection of rare books and manuscripts, concentrated in the fields of British and American history, literature, art, and the history of science. Spanning from the 11th century to the present, the library’s holdings contain 7 million manuscript items, over 400,000 rare books, and over a million photographs, prints, and other ephemera.

Highlights include one of eleven vellum copies of the Gutenberg Bible known to exist, the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer (ca. 1410), and letters and manuscripts by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln. It is the only library in the world with the first two quartos of Hamlet; it holds the manuscript of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, Isaac Newton’s personal copy of his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica with annotations in Newton’s own hand, the first seven drafts of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, John James Audubon’s Birds of America, and first editions and manuscripts from authors such as Charles Bukowski, Jack London, Alexander Pope, William Blake, Mark Twain, and William Wordsworth.

The Library’s Main Exhibition Hall showcases some of the most outstanding rare books and manuscripts in the collection, while the West Hall of the Library hosts rotating exhibitions. Only a small portion of the vast collection is on display at any one time. The Dibner Hall of the History of Science is a permanent exhibition on the history of science with a focus on astronomy, natural history, medicine, and light.

With the 2006 acquisition of the Burndy Library, a collection of nearly 60,000 items, the Huntington became one of the top institutions in the world for the study of the history of science and technology.

Art collections
The Huntington’s collections are displayed in permanent installations housed in the Huntington Art Gallery and Virginia Steele Scott Gallery of American Art. Special temporary exhibitions are mounted in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery, with smaller, focused exhibitions displayed in the Works on Paper Room in the Huntington Art Gallery and the Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing of the Scott Galleries. In addition the gallery also hosts different exhibitions of photography throughout the year including those about different social and political subjects.

European art
The European collection, consisting largely of 18th- and 19th-century British & French paintings, sculptures and decorative arts, is housed in The Huntington Art Gallery, the original Huntington residence. The permanent installation also includes selections from the Arabella D. Huntington Memorial Art Collection, which contains Italian and Northern Renaissance paintings and a spectacular collection of 18th-century French tapestries, porcelain, and furniture. Some of the best known works in the European collection include The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough, Pinkie by Thomas Lawrence, and Madonna and Child by Rogier van der Weyden.

American art
Complementing the European collections is the Huntington’s American art holdings, a collection of paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and photographs dating from the 17th to the mid-20th century. Highlights among the American art collections include Breakfast in Bed by Mary Cassatt, The Long Leg by Edward Hopper, Small Crushed Campbell’s Soup Can (Beef Noodle) by Andy Warhol, and Global Loft (Spread) by Robert Rauschenberg. As of 2014, the collection numbers some 12,000 works, ninety percent of them drawings, photographs and prints.

Galleries
See American art from the late 17th to the late 20th century on view in the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, and European art from the 15th to the early 20th century in the Huntington Art Gallery, the original Huntington residence. Find smaller, focused exhibitions in the Works on Paper Room in the Huntington Art Gallery and in the Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing of the Scott Galleries. Temporary exhibitions are on view in the The MaryLou and George Boone Gallery.

Huntington Art Gallery
The Huntington Art Gallery currently displays approximately 1,200 objects of European art from the 15th to the early 20th century. When the finishing touches were put on Henry E. Huntington’s San Marino villa in 1911, it was proclaimed one of the finest in Southern California, and a major achievement by architects Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey.

The Huntington Art Gallery’s function is twofold: to display the Beaux-Arts mansion as one of the great Gilded Age residences of America, evoking something of the lifestyle of the Huntingtons, and to provide educational displays of major works of art, taking advantage of modern techniques of conservation, lighting and interpretation.

The Huntington Art Gallery opened in 1928 displaying one of the greatest collections of 18th-century British art in the country, including the celebrated Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough and Pinkie by Thomas Lawrence. Since then the collections have grown enormously and now contain many great works of art of the Italian, French and Netherlandish schools, as well as a broader range of British art and design.

Once the house of Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) and his second wife, Arabella (1850–1924). In 1905, railroad and real estate magnate Henry Huntington commissioned an engineer E.S.Code to translate his own simple sketch of what he wanted into a buildable design. Retaining many of the features of the original plans, Hunt’s design subtly raised the game, removing Code’s neo-Palladian mannerisms, and restricting exterior classical ornament to the main compositions of the north and south fronts. To these he added a small porte cochere for the main entry, and – on the client’s insistence – the large peristylar loggia on the east, which to this day remains the building’s most distinguished architectural feature.

Ultimately, the building plan came to some 55,000 square feet, with the south façade and terrace reflecting Italian and Spanish Renaissance traditions of country house architecture, and the north façade, with its corps-de-logis and advancing wings, acknowledging the French tradition. As a whole, the house is a classic exercise in the emerging Mediterranean style of early-20th-century Californian architecture.

The entry on the north is deliberately understated providing functional spaces to accommodate visitors with parcels and luggage. As is typical in advanced country house architecture of the late 19th century, the real elegance is saved for the private part of the house—the great east-west hall, the large library, drawing rooms, dining room, and the expansive south terrace. All these have survived the transformation of the house into a public art gallery in the late 1920s, and have in the recent re-organization of the house been re-emphasized. Spaces such as bathrooms, many of the bedrooms, and private sitting rooms, the servants’ wing, were largely lost when the gallery opened to the public in 1928, a year after Henry’s death.

Highlights include a first-floor small library, the room originally designed as Mr Huntington’s ‘den’ where he could meet with visitors or business callers without bringing them into the private rooms. Though richly decorated, the large library was also a functional space; Huntington spent many hours reading there. The small and large drawing rooms were for entertainment, furnished with 18th-century French decorative art objects and British portraits. These spaces were planned for recreational moments—for playing cards, conversation, or listening to music.

A 2,900-square-foot hall was added in 1934 for displaying the Huntington’s Grand Manner portraits. Now called the Thornton Portrait Gallery, the addition followed a trend begun with the Wallace Collection in London, and followed almost 20 years later by the trustees of The Huntington and the Frick Collection in New York, as a suitable way of converting grand private houses into art museums.

Virginia Steele Scott Galleries
Utilizing more than 21,500 square feet, the Scott Galleries are one of the largest presentations in California of American art from the colonial period through the mid- 20th century. The Huntington’s American art holdings now number about 245 paintings, 60 works of sculpture, 990 decorative art objects, 8,500 prints and drawings, and 1,800 photographs.

In 1979 the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation made a major gift to The Huntington in memory of Virginia Steele Scott, art collector, patron, and philanthropist, which included a group of 50 American paintings, funds to construct a gallery to display the collection, and an endowment for its professional management.

Designed by Paul Gray, The Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art opened to the public in 1984, inaugurating American art as a significant part of The Huntington’s collections. Since then, the American art collection has grown dramatically, largely through the support of the Scott Foundation, the Huntington’s Art Collectors’ Council, generous donations to the collection, and significant long-term loans.

The Fieldings’ collection of 18th- and early 19th-century American art works, including paintings, sculpture, furniture, ceramics, metal, needlework, and other related decorative arts. Some of the objects are promised gifts to The Huntington. In its rich diversity, the Fielding Collection offers a rare opportunity to explore early American history through objects made for daily use and through images of the people who used them.

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Recent acquisitions and long-term loans from public and private collections including paintings by John Singleton Copley, Frederic Edwin Church, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, John Sloan, Robert Motherwell, and Sam Francis, as well as American decorative arts ranging from silver by Paul Revere to furniture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Frederick Fisher’s modern classical wing, the Lois and Robert F. Erburu Gallery, joined the neoclassical Scott Galleries in 2005. Together, the galleries sit beautifully in the Huntington landscape, inviting views of the mountains and gardens from the glass loggia and helping to develop a sense of interplay between the works of art inside and the gardens outside.

In 2016, the Scott Galleries underwent an 8,600 square-foot expansion including 5,000 square feet of gallery space with dramatic, colorful displays that showcase early American paintings, furniture, and works of decorative art, and offer important insights into the history of American art practice.

An important part of the permanent installation is a gallery devoted to the work of early 20th-century Pasadena architects Charles and Henry Greene. The galleries include a space for temporary exhibitions. The Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing showcases focused exhibitions from The Huntington’s rich collection of American prints, drawings, and photographs.

MaryLou and George Boone Gallery
The opening of the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery in March 2000, created an international class venue for changing exhibitions. Since its opening, The Huntington has been able to undertake major exhibitions drawn from its own collections and to bring exciting national and international exhibits to Southern California from other museums and galleries.

The building itself has a long history; designed in 1911 by architects Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, it was once founder Henry Huntington’s garage, used for family automobiles and to provide living quarters for members of Mr. Huntington’s staff. It took the commitment, vision, and generosity of MaryLou and George Boone to make the transformation of the space from garage to gallery possible.

The Fine Arts buildings had been renovated, adapted the neoclassical designed structure providing 4,000 square feet of space for use as a changing exhibition gallery. The building is now capable of accommodating any number of exhibition configurations; movable walls, multiple electrical outlets, and a lighting system with the ability to illuminate objects anywhere in the room. The gallery is equipped with state-of-the-art emergency power, as well as safety and fire detection systems, and is specially configured to provide for ambitious educational programs associated with exhibitions.

Exhibitions
Temporary and ongoing exhibitions can be seen in the Library Exhibition Hall, Huntington Art Gallery, Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, and Botanical Flora-Legium. The Boone Gallery also hosts temporary exhibitions.

Huntington Botanical Gardens
Encompassing about 130 acres, the botanical gardens feature 16 stunning themed gardens. In 1903 Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) purchased the San Marino Ranch, a working ranch about 12 miles from downtown Los Angeles with citrus groves, nut and fruit orchards, alfalfa crops, a small herd of cows, and poultry. His superintendent, William Hertrich (1878–1966), was instrumental in developing the various plant collections that comprise the foundation of The Huntington’s botanical gardens. The property—originally nearly 600 acres—today covers 207 acres, 130 of which are open to visitors. The Botanical collections comprise approximately 27,000 living plant taxa (i.e., different types of plants), which include some 16,000 species.

In addition to 130 acres of themed gardens, The Huntington has significant holdings of botanical living collections including orchids, camellias, cycads, and bonsai, examples of which may be found throughout the grounds. These core collections are being preserved, expanded, studied, and promoted for public appreciation, and support many areas of botanical research including conservation and cryopreservation. The collections also serve as the foundation of The Huntington’s educational programming, including botanical lectures, gardening workshops and demonstrations, and plant sales.

The Chinese Garden
Liu Fang Yuan, or the Garden of Flowing Fragrance, is one of the finest classical-style Chinese gardens outside of China. Filled with Chinese plants and framed by exquisite architecture, the landscape is enriched with references to literature and art. Visitors can find both physical relaxation and mental stimulation when exploring the dramatic 15-acre garden.

Liu Fang Yuan is inspired by the gardens of Suzhou, a city located near Shanghai in southeastern China. During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), wealthy scholars and merchants there built tasteful private gardens combining architecture, waterworks, rockeries, plants, and calligraphy. Many of the features in Liu Fang Yuan are modeled on specific Suzhou gardens, eight of which are depicted in the woodcarvings in the Love for the Lotus Pavilion (愛蓮榭).

Principles of landscape design formulated in Suzhou in the 16th and 17th centuries deeply inform Liu Fang Yuan. Most importantly, the garden has been designed to respect its natural locale. The Lake of Reflected Fragrance (映芳湖) shimmers in the same natural basin where water once collected after seasonal rains. The Court of Assembled Worthies (集賢院) is raised above ground level to protect the roots of native California live oaks. Each step through the garden’s pathways and pavilions reveals a new view as if a painted scroll were being unrolled scene by scene.

Suzhou-style gardens are filled with plants of literary or cultural significance. Certain flora represent the seasons (peach blossoms for spring, chrysanthemums for autumn); others stand for human qualities such as purity (lotus) or humility (orchid). Carvings of bamboo, pine, and plum blossoms adorn the ceiling of the Pavilion of the Three Friends (三友閣). These “three friends of the cold season” represent perseverance through difficult times: Pine is evergreen, bamboo never breaks, and plum trees flower in winter when most plants are dormant.

Rocks are an essential feature of Suzhou gardens. The stones found throughout Liu Fang Yuan are a type of limestone traditionally harvested from the bed of Lake Tai near Suzhou; today, they are quarried in various regions of China. For more than 1,200 years, these rocks have been renowned for their strange shapes and many holes. Particularly prized individual specimens, like the towering stone near the teahouse, Patching Up the Sky (補天), were seen as embodying energy-like ethers, or qi.

The pavilions, paths, and rockeries in Liu Fang Yuan are the product of years of international collaboration. In the early 2000s, a master plan for the garden was developed by designers in Suzhou; American architects ensured that it would be seismically sound and wheelchair accessible. All of the garden’s visible building materials—wood beams, roofing tiles, granite terraces, paving pebbles—were sourced in China and installed by teams of Suzhou artisans. Beneath their fine handwork lie concrete foundations and steel frameworks created by American construction workers.

Conservatory
The Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science houses interactive exhibits designed to engage children and families in a wonder-filled scientific exploration of plants. Living plants fill a 16,000 square-foot greenhouse that comprises three different habitats (a lowland tropical rain forest, a cloud forest, and a carnivorous plant bog) and a plant lab devoted to experiment stations focusing on the parts of plants.

Fifty interactive exhibits in four galleries offer a rare opportunity to study plants from all over the world. This warm, wet tropical environment contains rare and unusual palms, the Amorphophallus titanum (The Huntington’s infamous “Corpse Flower,” that blooms on rare occasions), and a pond featuring giant Amazon water lilies. Using technology from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, visitors can move a climate sensor pod up and down in the overhead canopy of trees, comparing light levels, humidity, and temperature in different layers of the forest. Another exhibit, “Rain Forest Spices” encourages visitors to smell popular spices from the rain forest (such as vanilla), and match them with the plants they come from (an orchid).

Cool, misty mountaintops in the tropics are often home to cloud forests. This habitat includes trees draped in orchids, ferns, and bromeliads, as well as unusual and beautiful tropical pitcher plants. Many of the plants found in cloud forests live with their roots in the air. Called epiphytes, they get water right from the clouds, so they can grow on trees, rocks, and even power lines.

This habitat displays some of The Huntington’s most unusual American plants: Venus flytraps, American pitcher plants, sundews, and sphagnum moss from the coastal bogs of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. In the wetlands of the Bog Gallery visitors can use magnifying lenses to see insects caught by such carnivorous plants as Venus flytraps, pitcher plants, and butterworts.

The Plant Lab offers an entertaining, hands-on introduction to botany, including a plant petting zoo. Exhibits are organized into six different groups: roots, stems, leaves, flowers, seeds, and spores. Visitors can design a leaf quilt using a variety of leaves and learn how to use scientific instruments including a refractometer, which measures the percentage of sugar in different nectars.

Australian Garden
Directly below and parallel to the Subtropical Garden, this five-acre open expanse of trees and shrubs offers a pleasant contrast to the paths and manicured lawns located on the hilltop. Early photos of this area show a grove of young Washington Navel orange trees. By the 1940s the orange trees were past their prime and 1,000 eucalyptus trees from the U.S. Department of Agriculture were planted to test their viability as timber. Informal groups of other plants native to Australia were interspersed among the trees, and the area was opened to the public in 1964.

The finest flowering display occurs in early spring, beginning with the blooming of the acacias and continuing on through the flowering of the kangaroo paws, melaleucas, wax flowers, and blue hibiscus. More than 100 of Australia’s some 700 Eucalyptus species grow in the garden. The endangered Eucalyptus woodwardii has one of the most beautiful flowers of all the smaller, shrubby eucalyptus called mallees. The bottle brushes (Callistemon spp.), named for their red brush-like flowers, are relatives of the eucalyptus.

The kangaroo paws (Anigozanthos) have fuzzy flowers that sit atop tall stalks. The mint bush (Prostanthera) has aromatic leaves and profuse masses of purple blossoms. Among the melaleucas represented is the chenille honey-myrtle, with snowy white flowers that bloom in early summer. Acacias range from trees to small shrubs. Most are festooned with fragrant yellow flowers in late winter.

California Garden
Landscaped with nearly 50,000 California natives and dry-climate plants, covering 6.5 acres, the Frances and Sidney Brody California Garden reflects the local Mediterranean climate as well as the agricultural and elegant estate history of the 207-acre Huntington grounds. A long, olive-lined allée leads through garden spaces in the Steven S. Koblik Education and Visitor Center, which include the orientation gallery, auditorium, café, and classrooms.

Camellia Garden
The winter landscape at The Huntington is covered with camellias. The botanical collections include nearly 80 different camellia species—sasanqua, japonica, reticulata, hiemalis, vernalis, tunghinensis, nitidissima, and semiserrata, to name just a few—and some 1,200 cultivated varieties. Most of them are at the peak of their bloom in January and February, putting on a dazzling display in the North Vista, Japanese Garden, and the Garden of Flowing Fragrance.

Children’s Garden
The Helen and Peter Bing Children’s Garden invites kids of all ages to splash in water, play among topiary animals, make music with pebbles, dance under rainbows, discover fairy doors, and hold the magic of magnetic forces in their hands. This whimsical garden is the perfect space for youngsters to explore the green world and develop a lifelong appreciation for nature.

Desert Garden
The Desert Garden, one of the world’s largest and oldest outdoor collections of cacti and other succulents, contains plants from extreme environments, many of which were acquired by Henry E. Huntington and William Hertrich (the garden curator). One of the Huntington’s most botanically important gardens, the Desert Garden, brings together a plant group largely unknown and unappreciated in the beginning of the 1900s. Containing a broad category of xerophytes (aridity-adapted plants), the Desert Garden grew to preeminence and remains today among the world’s finest, with more than 5,000 species.

Japanese Garden
In 1911, art dealer George Turner Marsh (who also created the Japanese Tea Garden at the Golden Gate Park) sold his commercial Japanese tea garden to Henry E. Huntington to create the foundations of what is known today as the Japanese Garden. The garden was completed in 1912 and opened to the public in 1928. According to historian Kendall Brown, the garden consists of three gardens: the original stroll garden with koi-filled ponds and a drum or moon bridge, the raked-gravel dry garden added in 1968, and the traditionally landscaped tea garden.

In addition, the gardens feature a large bell, the authentic ceremonial teahouse Seifu-an (the Arbor of Pure Breeze), a fully furnished Japanese house, the Zen Garden, and the bonsai collections with hundreds of trees. The Bonsai Courts at the Huntington is the home of the Golden State Bonsai Federation Southern Collection. Another ancient Japanese art form can be found at the Harry Hirao Suiseki Court, where visitors can touch the suiseki or viewing stones.

Sculptures & Fountains
In 1910, Henry E. Huntington began acquiring a large collection of outdoor sculptures, personally deciding on the exact location for each piece of garden statuary. Some of the statues were moved as many as three times until Huntington was satisfied. Love is a common theme among the garden sculpture, most of which dates from the late 17th and early 18th centuries, although some are the works of 20th-century American artists such as Anna Hyatt Huntington, the wife of Archer Huntington, Arabella’s only child by her first marriage. Visitors today can see an array of statuary in different media and from various cultural traditions across Europe and beyond.

The Mausoleum
Constructed of Colorado Yule marble, the mausoleum of Henry and Arabella Huntington overlooks the gardens from a knoll in the middle of the orange groves. It was a spot that Mr. Huntington loved. Mr. Huntington selected John Russell Pope, one of America’s most distinguished architects, to design the mausoleum in the form of a Greek temple.

The weight and mass of the Huntington memorial are balanced between the two extremes of garden temple and mausoleum. The outer colonnade relates to the garden temple with its graceful ornamentation, inviting free play of light and air through the structure; but the second, inner colonnade with its solid masonry piers and free-standing columns present the memorial as a solemn sepulcher.

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