Beneath every robber baron’s graceful mansion seems to lie a graveyard of questionable deeds.
Cue Henry E. Huntington. Business mogul. Rail magnate. Rapacious real estate developer. Cantankerous enemy of organized labor.
Cue, also, Henry E. Huntington. Devoted aesthete. Prolific collector of art and books and plants, who left the lot to the public in the form of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens on land that was once his vast San Marino estate.
Now, 102 years after he and his wife Arabella Duval Huntington founded it, this patrician institution finds itself at a crossroads the benefactor of Gilded Age wealth attempting to evolve into the post-George Floyd era, when art museums around the country are reckoning with questions of equity and race.
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Updated on January 22, 2021 at 9:44 am
Architectural Resource Group/The Huntington
What to Know
The tea room, located inside The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, is temporarily closed
Outdoor spaces at the San Marino-based gardens remain open as 2021 begins, but advance reservations are necessary
Outdoor dining, and other features, will be added to the 1911 structure, a building designed by celebrated architect Myron Hunt
There are bowling alleys and billiard rooms in this world, and there are tea rooms, too, the sort of pretty places known for crustless sandwiches and dainty desserts.
But finding a crossover between bowling, billiards, and a beautiful spot for socializing and sipping tea?
A fortune, a widow and a castle in Lake Tahoe’s Emerald Bay By Julie Brown
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the mysterious widow who built the castle at Emerald Bay.
I often visit Emerald Bay to go hiking. From the mountainside, you can see Fanette Island and just barely make out the box-like shape of a stone teahouse on top. I ve heard stories about the wealthy woman who built the teahouse on the island. In the summer, when guests would visit her at her castle on the shore of Emerald Bay, called Vikingsholm, the butler would row her and her friends across the bay to the island for tea time. I imagined they wore summer dresses, carried parasols and sipped tea out of fine china, while enjoying Emerald Bay’s glory all by themselves.