The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens (San Marino, California)

 museum, park, library, garden

1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
(626) 405-2100

www.huntington.org/

The library contains an extensive collection of rare books and manuscripts, including a Gutenberg Bible, the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer, and thousands of historical documents about Abraham Lincoln, including the papers of his bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon. The rare books and manuscripts in the library are among the most heavily used in the United States. The library holds some 6.5 million manuscripts and more than a million rare books. It is the only library in the world with the first two quartos of Hamlet; it holds the manuscript of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, the first seven drafts of Henry David Thoreau's Walden, John James Audubon's Birds of America, a collection of manuscripts and first editions of the works of Charles Bukowski and many other great treasures.

The art collection consists of the works of 18th and 19th century British and French artists and 18th, 19th and early 20th century American artists, as well as changing exhibitions. The best known works of British art are 'The Blue Boy' by Thomas Gainsborough and Sarah Barrett Moulton: "Pinkie" by Thomas Lawrence. In American art, the collection includes masterworks such as Frederic Church's Chimborazo (1864) and Harriet Hosmer's monumental sculpture Zenobia in Chains (1859).