Building Construction and Facilities

The Huntington in New York City, New York

The first Huntington private library was located in New York City at Huntington's mansion on 57th Street and 5th Avenue. To the side is a picture of Huntington in his New York library.


The library staff worked in portions of the Huntington house in New York, during the transition of the library to San Marino, California, helping to pack all the items and get them ready for shipment. The early Huntington Library building, in New York, included a “service wing” which held the “book room,” where boxes of books were received, unpacked for checking and listing, and later repacked for shipment to California (Schad, p.19). There was a “billard room” that was converted into the “catalogue room”  which was a temporary clearing house for accessions (Schad, p.20). The staff consisted of twelve people and they all occupied the catalogue room. Inside the catalogue room included the reference collection. The library was located on the third floor, which was directly over the catalogue room, and like the catalogue room, was a very long room. The library consisted of a fireplace, high bookcases, and to the rear of the library was a double desk. Huntington and his private secretary George D. Hapgood both occupied the double desk (Schad p. 27). This was considered the headquarters, that was used for business conferences about books. For instance, in he library room, was where Huntington spoke to dealers about possible book auctions.

The Huntington in San Marino, California

Huntington fell in love with Southern California, and visited for eight years. After his rich uncle, Collis, died in 1900, he relocated to Los Angeles, even though his primary residence was in New York City. In 1903, he bought the Shorb ranch (in San Marino) and nearby properties which equaled 800 acres. He replaced the Victorian ranch house with a mansion. Huntington worked with an architect by the name of Myron Hunt, and together they planned, designed and constructed the house, completing it in 1910 (Zeidburg, p.9). Huntington's concept would be that he would live around a library. He wanted a residence that would be able to house all of his library collections. Huntington collected from 1911 to 1914, and sent 50,000 books to San Marino because the New York residence was full of books and art items. By 1915, both houses were full of rare items. In 1916, Huntington announced publicly that he was going to relocate his entire library to San Marino. So, Huntington began his collecting in New York city, and in San Marino, with the latter being the permanent location for the library.


First, the Huntington house was built, and next, in 1919,  the construction of the library began, and was completed in 1920.Huntington chose Southern California, because he believed that the region would become a "major commercial and cultural center...he wanted his collections to form the foundation of a collection-based research and education institution" (Zeidburg, p.16).  So, the first library was located in New York City, because Huntington began purchasing books and having them shipped to his New York mansion. Huntington moved his library from New York City to California in 1920. Below is a picture of the Huntington Library building, in 1922.

Huntington kept purchasing more rare books and manuscripts, so his collection grew large. One can question, how Huntington decided what to include in his collection? (for librarians, a selection policy). From the book The Huntington Library: Treasures from Ten Countries, David Zeidberg notes that Huntington's collections had a focus, or Huntington had a particular interest and collected based on his interest, which was "the history of the English-speaking peoples" (p. 9). From 1910 to his death in 1927, Huntington was known to have collected rare books and manuscripts, in which he acquired more than 200 entire libraries, forming the Library's research collection (Zeidberg, p. 9).


Construction of the library began in 1919, and was completed in 1920.