Carnegie Grant

Huntington was a wealthy man, who supported the funding for the building and collection for his own private library. Having developed local rail transportation, the light rail systems of the Pacific Electric Railway Company and its Red Car line, and developed land and utilities throughout the Los Angeles area, Huntington was wealthy enough to develop and build a library on his own. A Carnegie Grant was not provided for this library. Huntington is similar to Carnegie in the fact that they both helped develop and expand America, and they used their wealth to establish libraries that would help educate individuals. Carnegie is considered to be one of the richest men in history, and Huntington is considered to be a great book collector of his time, with a little help from book dealers.

Since Huntington is an upper-class, wealthy man, he did not need Carnegie's grant money; instead, he used his own money to fund the entire library building project, as well as purchase all the items his the collection. Huntington's library was a personal project that benefited many individuals.  However, there were many other grants awarded to the Huntington library. According to LA Times online newspaper, in 1988, the Huntington Library received a $237,300 grant from the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation. The grant was used for the conservation and renovation of the art collection gallery (LA Times). Another grant from the National Science Foundation, awarded the Huntington $367,000 grant to archive the history of the aerospace industry in Southern California (Huntington Press). The grant is useful for two years, and the money would be used to collect original documentary materials and oral histories and make them available to researchers.  This project would be considered a research collaboration between the Huntington library and USC's College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. These grants suggest that the library is a research facility that should grow and expand on the collection, to include more science materials.