Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
277
Henry Huntington was born in New York. As the nephew of Collis Huntington, one of the San
Francisco “Big Four,” Henry came to California for a job arranged by his influential uncle. Henry
ventured on to Los Angeles to make his own fortune by creating the Pacific Electric Railway. As
the forerunner of modern rapid transit systems, his “Red Cars” served more than fifty cities until it
was dismantled in the 1950s.
Another wealthy settler new to the area was General Marshall Clark Wentworth. Having
achieved his rank during the Civil War, the general found himself managing a hotel first in New
Hampshire, then later in Pasadena, after being lured there by a friend. Wentworth was so impressed
with the opportunities that hotels offered, he built his own in 1906.
The Hotel Wentworth boasted 275 rooms built in a concrete-reinforced structure designed to
be fireproof and resistant to damage by earthquakes. Unfortunately, the hotel did not open on time,
since most laborers were in San Francisco following the Great Earthquake there. It suffered from
a leaking roof, forcing many guests to move elsewhere. Wentworth was forced into bankruptcy but
his neighbor would benefit from his financial difficulties.
Henry Huntington eventually married his aunt, Collis's widow, and they set out to create an
extraordinary estate on the land in Pasadena. He admired the Wentworth Hotel near his estate,
and when it became available, he bought it. Renovating, redesigning, and adding new rooms, he
reopened it as the Huntington Hotel in 1914.
Huntington hired D. M. Linnard to manage his new property, and Linnard eventually con-
vinced his son-in-law, Stephen Royce, to take over. Royce would not only manage the hotel for the
next forty-five years, he also owned it for much of that time.
Royce was responsible for installing the first Olympic-sized swimming pool in California at the
Huntington. He also changed the schedule so that the hotel remained open year-round, rather than
closing during the summer as all other hotels had done. During the Great Depression, reorganiza-
tion of the hotel's financial structure left Royce the sole owner. He weathered the banking collapse
of 1933 by issuing “scrip” to be used within the hotel in place of money, which was in short supply.
Some of this “money” is on display in the Smithsonian.
