Huntington Library

The Huntington Library, along with associated Art Collections and Botanical Gardens was founded by industrialist and philanthropist Henry E. Huntington in 1919 in San Marino, California. The Huntington, as it is known, is one of the largest and most complete research libraries in the United States in its fields of specialization, containing a substantial collection of rare books and manuscripts, concentrated in the fields of British and American history, literature, art, and the history of science. Spanning from the 11th century to the present, the library’s holdings contain 7 million items, over 400,000 rare books, and over a million photographs and prints.

Highlights include one of 11 vellum copies of the Gutenberg Bible known to exist, the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer ca. 1410, letters and manuscripts by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln, as well as an extensive research collection focused on the history of the American West.

In 2013, a renovation was undertaken for the Main Exhibition Hall, a space that first opened in 1920. The goal was to reflecting the building’s historic grandeur, while implementing an updated setting in which to display and protect the myriad of treasures. An important element in the restoration were three dramatic reproduction chandeliers which were to be custom-built and equipped with state-of-the-art LED lighting, to evoke the space as it looked in Henry Huntington’s day. Since the original chandeliers were not available, the plan was set to make use of archival photographs in order to custom design and re-cast nearly exact copies of the originals. With so much time and effort required for that effort, it was impractical to custom design light engines, of any type, to provide illumination from inside the chandeliers. A ready-to-integrate solution was required.