Municipal corporation
To cities, towns, charter townships and boroughs. The term can be used to describe municipally owned corporations. Municipal incorporation occurs when such municipalities become self-governing entities under the laws of the state or province in which they are located; this event is marked by the award or declaration of a municipal charter. A city charter or town charter or municipal charter is a legal document establishing a municipality, such as a city or town. In Canada, charters are granted by provincial authorities; the Corporation of Chennai is the oldest Municipal Corporation in the world after UK. The title "corporation" was used in boroughs from soon after the Norman conquest until the Local Government Act 2001. Under the 2001 act, county boroughs were renamed "cities" and their corporations became "city councils". After the Partition of Ireland, the corporations in the Irish Free State were Dublin, Cork and Waterford and Drogheda, Sligo and Wexford. Dún Laoghaire gained borough status in 1930 as “The Corporation of Dun Laoghaire".
Galway's borough status, lost in 1840, was restored in 1937. The New Zealand Constitution Act 1852 allowed municipal corporations to be established within the new Provinces of New Zealand; the term fell out of favour following the abolition of the Provinces in 1876. In the United States, such municipal corporations are established by charters that are granted either directly by a state legislature by means of local legislation, or indirectly under a general municipal corporation law after the proposed charter has passed a referendum vote of the affected population. Under the enterprise meaning of the term, municipal corporations are "organisations with independent corporate status, managed by an executive board appointed by local government officials, with majority public ownership"; some MOCs rely on revenue from user fees, distinguishing them from agencies and special districts funded through taxation, although this is not always the case. Municipal corporation follows a process of externalization that requires new skills and orientations from the respective local governments, follow common changes in the institutional landscape of public services.
They are argued to be more efficient than bureaucracy but have higher failure rates because of their legal and managerial autonomy. Unincorporated area German town law Municipal incorporationA Brief Summary of Municipal Incorporation Procedures by State - University of Georgia Characteristics and State Requirements for Incorporated Places - United States CensusMunicipal disincorporation / dissolutionDissolving Cities - University of California, Berkeley Municipal Disincorporation in California - California City Finance
Mexico
Mexico the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States. Covering 2,000,000 square kilometres, the nation is the fifth largest country in the Americas by total area and the 13th largest independent state in the world. With an estimated population of over 120 million people, the country is the eleventh most populous state and the most populous Spanish-speaking state in the world, while being the second most populous nation in Latin America after Brazil. Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and Mexico City, a special federal entity, the capital city and its most populous city. Other metropolises in the state include Guadalajara, Puebla, Tijuana and León. Pre-Columbian Mexico dates to about 8000 BC and is identified as one of five cradles of civilization and was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Olmec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec and Aztec before first contact with Europeans. In 1521, the Spanish Empire conquered and colonized the territory from its politically powerful base in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, administered as the viceroyalty of New Spain.
Three centuries the territory became a nation state following its recognition in 1821 after the Mexican War of Independence. The post-independence period was tumultuous, characterized by economic inequality and many contrasting political changes; the Mexican–American War led to a territorial cession of the extant northern territories to the United States. The Pastry War, the Franco-Mexican War, a civil war, two empires, the Porfiriato occurred in the 19th century; the Porfiriato was ended by the start of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the country's current political system as a federal, democratic republic. Mexico has the 11th largest by purchasing power parity; the Mexican economy is linked to those of its 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement partners the United States. In 1994, Mexico became the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, it is classified as an upper-middle income country by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country by several analysts.
The country is considered both a regional power and a middle power, is identified as an emerging global power. Due to its rich culture and history, Mexico ranks first in the Americas and seventh in the world for number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Mexico is an ecologically megadiverse country, ranking fourth in the world for its biodiversity. Mexico receives a huge number of tourists every year: in 2018, it was the sixth most-visited country in the world, with 39 million international arrivals. Mexico is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G8+5, the G20, the Uniting for Consensus group of the UN, the Pacific Alliance trade bloc. Mēxihco is the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely the Valley of Mexico and surrounding territories, with its people being known as the Mexica, it is believed to be a toponym for the valley which became the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance as a result, although it could have been the other way around.
In the colonial era, back when Mexico was called New Spain this territory became the Intendency of Mexico and after New Spain achieved independence from the Spanish Empire it came to be known as the State of Mexico with the new country being named after its capital: the City of Mexico, which itself was founded in 1524 on top of the ancient Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Traditionally, the name Tenochtitlan was thought to come from Nahuatl tetl and nōchtli and is thought to mean "Among the prickly pears rocks". However, one attestation in the late 16th-century manuscript known as "the Bancroft dialogues" suggests the second vowel was short, so that the true etymology remains uncertain; the suffix -co is the Nahuatl locative, making the word a place name. Beyond that, the etymology is uncertain, it has been suggested that it is derived from Mextli or Mēxihtli, a secret name for the god of war and patron of the Mexica, Huitzilopochtli, in which case Mēxihco means "place where Huitzilopochtli lives".
Another hypothesis suggests that Mēxihco derives from a portmanteau of the Nahuatl words for "moon" and navel. This meaning might refer to Tenochtitlan's position in the middle of Lake Texcoco; the system of interconnected lakes, of which Texcoco formed the center, had the form of a rabbit, which the Mesoamericans pareidolically associated with the moon rabbit. Still another hypothesis suggests that the word is derived from Mēctli, the name of the goddess of maguey; the name of the city-state was transliterated to Spanish as México with the phonetic value of the letter x in Medieval Spanish, which represented the voiceless postalveolar fricative. This sound, as well as the voiced postalveolar fricative, represented by a j, evolved into a voiceless velar fricative during the 16th century; this led to the use of the variant Méjico in many publications in Spanish, most notably in Spain, whereas in Mexico and most other Spanish–speaking countries, México was the preferred spelling. In recent years, the Real Academia Española, which regulates the Spanish l
Commerce, California
Commerce is a city located in southeast Los Angeles County, United States. The population was 12,823 at the 2010 census, up from 12,568 at the 2000 census, it is bordered by Vernon on the west, Los Angeles on the northwest, East Los Angeles on the north, Montebello on the east and Bell Gardens on the south, Maywood on the southwest. The Los Angeles River forms part of its southwestern boundary, the Rio Hondo separates it from Downey. Commerce is served by the Long Beach and Santa Ana freeways, as well as the Metrolink commuter rail service at the Commerce station, it is referred to as the "City of Commerce" to distinguish it from the common noun. In the 19th century, the area was part of Antonio Maria Lugo's Rancho San Antonio, its conversion to an industrial area began in 1887, when the Atchison and Santa Fe Railway built its main line through the area. The ranch remained intact until Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker, reputedly once the wealthiest woman in Los Angeles, sold some of it around the turn of the 20th century.
The Atchison and Santa Fe Railway and Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad both were built through what would become the community, as was the Pacific Electric Railway's Whittier Line. By the 1920s, factories had arrived. In the late 1940s, industrial leaders banded together with residents in the communities of Bandini and Laguna to encourage commerce, they changed the name to match that goal. The city was incorporated in 1960 to prevent neighboring cities such as Vernon and Los Angeles from annexing industrial land for tax revenue and elected its first city mayor, Maurice Quigley. In the 1970s and 1980s, Commerce negotiated the turbulent period of deindustrialization that hammered nearby cities such as South Gate and Norwalk, maintaining much of its manufacturing and goods-distribution base and converting former industrial land to lucrative commercial uses; the most notable example of this phenomenon is the Citadel outlet mall, which occupies the site of a former tire factory. The owner of the Citadel, Steve Craig, hosts an annual Clean Up Commerce Day and enlists other businesses to work with the city and volunteers in beautifying a specific area of the city.
With a major rail yard within its borders, Commerce has benefited from the huge expansion in international trade traffic through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, albeit at the expense of severe air pollution caused by truck congestion on the Long Beach Freeway. Chrysler had an assembly plant in Commerce from 1930 through July 1971 located at 5800 S. Eastern Avenue and Slauson Avenue, called Los Angeles Assembly, it was closed at the end of the 1971 model year, as Chrysler decided to triple-stack its transport trains for the 1972 model year. Commerce boasts a large aquatic center, Commerce Aquatics that has trained a number of successful water polo players, including four-time Olympic medallist Brenda Villa. Commerce is the site of Williams Ranch, on, the swimming hole that the Sleepy Lagoon Murder of Jose Diaz took place in 1942; the Sleepy Lagoon swimming hole was located near Slauson and Eastern Ave. Commerce is located at 34°0′2″N 118°9′17″W. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 6.5 square miles, over 99% of it land.
The 2010 United States Census reported that Commerce had a population of 12,823. The population density was 1,961.4 people per square mile. The racial makeup of Commerce was 6,930 White, 96 African American, 161 Native American, 140 Asian, 9 Pacific Islander, 4,886 from other races, 601 from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 12,114 persons; the Census reported that 12,753 people lived in households, 2 lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, 68 were institutionalized. There were 3,382 households, out of which 1,751 had children under the age of 18 living in them, 1,693 were opposite-sex married couples living together, 708 had a female householder with no husband present, 308 had a male householder with no wife present. There were 248 unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, 23 same-sex married couples or partnerships. 559 households were made up of individuals and 326 had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.77. There were 2,709 families.
The population was spread out with 3,824 people under the age of 18, 1,458 people aged 18 to 24, 3,581 people aged 25 to 44, 2,590 people aged 45 to 64, 1,370 people who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31.2 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.7 males. There were 3,470 housing units at an average density of 530.8 per square mile, of which 1,619 were owner-occupied, 1,763 were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.0%. 6,631 people lived in owner-occupied housing units and 6,122 people lived in rental housing units. According to the 2010 United States Census, Commerce had a median household income of $48,729, with 16.5% of the population living below the federal poverty line. As of the census of 2000, there were 12,568 people, 3,284 households, 2,686 families residing in the city; the population density was 1,913.6 inhabitants per square mile. There were 3,377 housing units a
Streetcar suburb
A streetcar suburb is a residential community whose growth and development was shaped by the use of streetcar lines as a primary means of transportation. Early suburbs were served by horsecars, but by the late 19th century cable cars and electric streetcars, or trams, were used, allowing residences to be built further away from the urban core of a city. Streetcar suburbs called additions or extensions at the time, were the forerunner of today's suburbs in the United States and Canada. Western Addition in San Francisco is one of the best examples of streetcar suburbs before westward and southward expansion occurred. Although most associated with the electric streetcar, the term can be used for any suburb built with streetcar-based transit in mind, thus some streetcar suburbs date from the early 19th century; as such, the term is general and one development called a streetcar suburb may vary from others. However, some concepts are present in streetcar suburbs, such as straight street plans and narrow lots.
By 1830, many New York City area commuters were going to work in Manhattan from what are now the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, which were not part of New York City at that time. They commuted by ferries. In 1852, architect Alexander Jackson Davis designed Llewellyn Park in New Jersey, a planned suburb served by both ferry and steam railroad. In the 1840s and 1850s, new railroad lines fostered the development of such New York City suburbs as Yonkers, White Plains, New Rochelle; the steam locomotive in the mid 19th century provided the wealthy with the means to live in bucolic surroundings, to socialize in country clubs and still commute to work downtown. These suburbs were what historian Kenneth T. Jackson called the "railroad suburbs" and historian Robert Fishman called a "bourgeois utopia". Outside of Philadelphia, suburbs like Radnor, Bryn Mawr, Villanova developed along the Pennsylvania Main Line; as early as 1850, 83 commuter stations had been built within a 15-mile radius of Boston. Chicago saw huge developments, with 11 separate lines serving over 100 communities by 1873.
A famous community served was Riverside, arguably one of the first planned communities in the United States, designed in 1869 by Frederick Law Olmsted. However, the suburbs closest to the city were based on horsecars and cable cars. First introduced to America around 1830, the horse-drawn omnibus was revolutionary because it was the first mass transit system, offering scheduled stops along a fixed route, allowing passengers to travel three miles sitting down in the time it would take them to walk two miles. More efficient horse-drawn streetcars allowed cities to expand to areas more distant. By 1860, they operated in most major American and Canadian cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Saint Louis and Boston. Horsecar suburbs emanated from the city center towards the more distant railroad suburbs. For the first time, transportation began to separate social and economic classes in cities, as the working and middle class continued to live in areas closer to the city center, while the rich could afford to live further out.
The introduction of the electrical streetcar in Richmond, Virginia in 1887 by Frank J. Sprague marked the start of a new era of transportation-influenced suburbanization through the birth of the "streetcar suburb"; the early trolley allowed people to effortlessly travel in 10 minutes what they could walk in 30, was introduced in cities like Boston and Los Angeles, to all larger American and Canadian cities. There were 5,783 miles of streetcar track serving American cities in 1890. By 1890, electric streetcar lines were replacing horse-drawn ones in cities of all sizes, allowing the lines to be extended and fostering a tremendous amount of suburban development, they were extended out to rural communities, which experienced an initial surge of development, new residential corridors were created along the newly built lines leading to what had sometimes been separate communities. On side streets, the houses closest to the original streetcar line are as much as ten to twenty years older than houses built further down the street, reflecting the initial surge and slow completion of a development.
Because streetcar operators offered low fares and free transfers, commuting was affordable to nearly everyone. Combined with the cheap cost of land further from the city, streetcar suburbs were able to attract a broad mix of people from all socioeconomic classes, although they were most popular by far with the middle class; the houses in a streetcar suburb were narrow in width compared to homes, Arts and Crafts movement styles like the California Bungalow and American Foursquare were most popular. These houses were purchased by catalog and many of the materials arrived by railcar, with some local touches added as the house was assembled; the earliest streetcar suburbs sometimes had more ornate styles, including Stick. The houses of streetcar suburbs, whatever the style, tended to have prominent front porches, while driveways and built-in garages were rare, reflecting the pedestrian-focused nature of the streets when the houses were built. Setbacks between houses were not nearly as small as in older neighborhoods, but houses were still built on lots no wider than 30 to 40 feet.
Shops such as groceries and drug stores were built near the intersection of streetcar lines or directly along more traveled routes (otherwise, routes would be lined with houses similar to those found in
San Gabriel Valley
The San Gabriel Valley is one of the principal valleys of Southern California, lying to the east of the city of Los Angeles. Surrounding features include: San Gabriel Mountains on the north, San Rafael Hills to the west, with Los Angeles Basin beyond; the valley derives its name from the San Gabriel River that flows southward through the center of the valley, which itself was named for the Spanish Mission San Gabriel Arcángel built in the Whittier Narrows in 1771. At one time predominantly agricultural, the San Gabriel Valley is today entirely urbanized and is an integral part of the Greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, it is one of the most ethnically diverse regions in the country. About 200 square miles in size, the valley includes thirty-one cities and five unincorporated communities. In 1886, Pasadena was the first independent incorporated city still located in Los Angeles County; the San Gabriel Valley is in Los Angeles County. The incorporated cities and unincorporated neighborhoods of the San Gabriel Valley include: Whittier, like Montebello, is considered both a San Gabriel Valley city and part of the Gateway Cities region.
An unincorporated portion of Whittier, Rose Hills, sits below the Puente Hills. Although these hills are small compared to the San Gabriel Mountains, the fact that most of the city sits around them makes Whittier a San Gabriel Valley city; this is similar to Montebello, a member of the Gateway Cities Council of Governments, despite geographically being part of the San Gabriel Valley. Claremont, Diamond Bar, La Verne, San Dimas and Walnut are adjacent to the San Gabriel Valley, although are properly considered part of the Pomona Valley, they are commonly considered part of the San Gabriel Valley; the 57 Freeway is considered the dividing line between the Pomona and San Gabriel valleys. However, for statistical and economic development purposes, the County of Los Angeles includes these six cities as part of the San Gabriel Valley; the community of El Sereno, in the city of Los Angeles, is situated at the westernmost edge of the Valley. Unofficial estimates place the combined population of the San Gabriel Valley at around 2 million—roughly a fifth of the population of Los Angeles County.
Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the land along the Rio Hondo River, a branch of the San Gabriel River, was populated by the Tongva part of the Uto-Aztecan family Native Americans. The Tongva occupied much of the Los Angeles basin and the islands of Santa Catalina, San Nicolas, San Clemente and Santa Barbara. In the northern part of the valley were the Hahanog-na Indian tribe, a branch of the Tongva Nation who lived in villages scattered along the Arroyo Seco and the canyons from the mountains down to the South Pasadena area. In 1542, when the explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo arrived off the shores of San Pedro and Santa Catalina; the Tongva were the people. The language of the Tongva was different from the neighboring Indian tribes and it was called Gabrielino by the Spanish; the Tongva provide the origin of many current names. The Gabrielinos lived in dome-like structures with thatched exteriors. Both sexes tattooed their bodies. During warm weather the men wore little clothing, but the women would wear minimal skirts made of animal hides.
During the cold weather they would wear animal skin capes. European diseases killed many of the Tongva and by 1870 the area had few remaining native inhabitants. Today, several bands of Tongva people live in the Los Angeles area; the first Europeans to see inland areas of California were the members of the 1769 Portolà expedition, which traveled north by land after establishing the first Spanish settlement in today's state of California at San Diego. On July 30, the expedition crossed the San Gabriel River and continued north toward what is now the city of Los Angeles. To cross the river, the expedition built a rough bridge, which gave the name La Puente to today's San Gabriel Valley city, hills to the south are called the Puente Hills. A few years a mission was established near the river crossing. Mission San Gabriel Arcangel was founded by Franciscan Father Junipero Serra, first head of the Spanish missions in California, on September 8, 1771, its original location was near where San Gabriel Boulevard now crosses the Rio Hondo, near the present day Juan Matias Sanchez Adobe.
Angel Somera and Pedro Cambon were the first missionary priests at the new mission, which marked the beginning of the Los Angeles region's settlement by Spaniards. The San Gabriel mission was the third of twenty-one missions that would be established along California's El Camino Real; the San Gabriel mission did well in establishing cattle ranching and farming, but six years after its founding a destructive flood led the mission fathers to relocate the establishment to its current location farther north in present-day city of San Gabriel. The original mission site is now marked by a California Historical Landmark. During the early years of the mission, the region operated under a Rancho system; the lands which now compose the city of Montebello were parts of Rancho San Antonio, Rancho La Merced, Rancho Paso de Bartolo. The Juan Matias Sanchez Adobe, built in 1844, remains standin
Downey, California
Downey is a city located in southeast Los Angeles County, United States, 13 mi southeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is considered part of the Gateway Cities; the city is the birthplace of the Apollo space program. It is the home of the oldest still operational McDonald's restaurant in the world; as of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 111,779. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish in Alta California, the area, now Downey was inhabited by the Tongva ethnic group, which came to be called the Gabrielino by the Spanish; the nearest Tongva settlements appear to have been just north and northeast of present-day Downey, although there is difficulty in locating them precisely. The villages of Naxaaw’nga and Sehat seem to have been situated near the present-day community of Los Nietos, or farther west on sites that were lost to floods of the San Gabriel River. Chokiishnga and Huutnga are other Tongva place names that may have referred to villages in the general area north of Downey between the San Gabriel River and Rio Hondo.
In all four cases, it is difficult to relate the original location descriptions, based on ranchos and land grants, to more specific sites identifiable by today's landmarks. Mission San Gabriel Arcángel was founded on September 8, 1771, near these concentrations of Tongva population, at a site in the Whittier Narrows on a bluff overlooking the Rio Hondo near the intersection of today's San Gabriel Blvd and Lincoln Avenue. After five years, flooding forced the relocation of the mission to its present site in San Gabriel. In 1784, Governor Pedro Fages granted to former soldier Manuel Nieto the largest of the land concessions made during the Spanish control of California, its 300,000 acres stretched from the Santa Ana River on the east to the Old San Gabriel River on the west, from the mission highway on the north to the ocean on the south. Its acreage was reduced at the insistence of Mission San Gabriel on whose lands it infringed; the Spanish concessions, of which 25 were made in California, were unlike the Mexican land grants in that title was not transferred, but were similar to grazing permits, with the title remaining with the Spanish crown.
The Rancho Los Nietos passed to Manuel Nieto's four children upon his death and remained intact until, in 1833, his heirs petitioned Mexican Governor José Figueroa to partition the property. The northwestern portion of the original rancho, comprising the Downey-Norwalk area, was granted as Rancho Santa Gertrudes to Josefa Cota, the widow of Manuel's son, Antonio Nieto. At 21,000 acres, Santa Gertrudes was itself a sizable rancho and contained the old Nietos homestead, a center of social life east of the pueblo of Los Angeles. After the Mexican–American War concluded in 1848, many of the Californio ranchos were obtained by affluent Anglo-Americans who were immigrating west under the United States manifest destiny doctrine, marrying into established Californio Spanish families; this migration was distinct from. Dairy was a major industry in Downey; the Central Milk Agency marketed the milk for "seven hundred dairymen whose dairy herds range from thirty to two thousand head" with the value of the products marketed in excess of $1,000,000 per month.
Some of Downey's settlers came from Ireland. Downey was founded by and named for the former and youngest governor of California, John Gately Downey, born in Ireland. Although he was an Irish Democrat, he supported the Republican Lincoln in his efforts to keep the Union intact during the American Civil War, he pioneered the modern subdivision with land he acquired between the Rio Hondo and the San Gabriel River, in about 1865. Downey was convinced that oranges would flourish in Southern California, so he imported several varieties, therefore set in motion what became one of the state's biggest cash crops. In conjunction with the construction of the Tehachapi Loop, the Southern Pacific Railroad arrived in 1873. Farmers in the area grew grain, castor beans and fruit, by 1935 Downey was characterized as an "orange-grove town". Downey was incorporated in 1956, instituted a charter form of government in 1964. Suburban homes and factories replaced the farms after World War II. Vultee Aircraft was Downey's largest employer during World War II, producing 15% of all of America's military aircraft by 1941.
The company was a pioneer in the use of women in manufacturing positions, was the first aircraft company to build airplanes on a powered assembly line. Vultee became a part of North American Aviation, whose facilities were the birthplace of the systems for the Apollo Space Program as well as the Space Shuttle. For over 70 years, Downey's Rockwell NASA plant produced and tested many of the 20th century's greatest aviation and space endeavors. By the early 1970s, the facilities encompassed some 1,700,000 square feet of enclosed area over more than 200 acres. But, by the post-Cold War 1990s, Downey was brutally hit by cutbacks in the defense budget. Rockwell International, who once had over 30,000 employees, had less than 5,000 in 1992; the seventy-year history of airplane and space vehicle manufacturing in Downey came to an end when the Rockwell plant closed in 1999. The former North American Rockwell plant was demolished, the site now features the Columbia Memorial Space Center, Downey Landing shopping center, a Kaiser Permanente hospital, a city recreation fields park, the former movie studio site of Downey Stud
Henry E. Huntington
Henry Edwards Huntington was an American railroad magnate and collector of art and rare books. Huntington settled in Los Angeles, where he owned the Pacific Electric Railway as well as substantial real estate interests. In addition to being a businessman and art collector, Huntington was a major booster for Los Angeles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the city of San Marino, many places are named after him, including a school, a road and a library. Born in Oneonta, New York, Henry Huntington was the nephew of Collis P. Huntington, one of The Big Four, instrumental in creating the Central Pacific Railroad, one of the two railroads that built the transcontinental railway in 1869. Henry Huntington held several executive positions alongside his uncle with the Southern Pacific. After Collis Huntington's death, Henry Huntington assumed Collis Huntington's leadership role with Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Virginia, married his widow Arabella Huntington, his divorce from his first wife Mary Alice Prentice, birth sister of his Uncle Collis' adopted daughter, in 1910 and marriage to Arabella in 1913 after Mary Alice's death shocked San Francisco society.
He had none with Arabella. Arabella's son Archer, from her prior marriage from which she was widowed, had earlier been adopted by Collis Huntington. In 1898, in friendly competition with his uncle's Southern Pacific, Huntington bought the narrow gauge city-oriented Los Angeles Railway, known as the'Yellow Car' system. In 1901, Huntington formed the sprawling interurban, standard gauge Pacific Electric Railway, known as the'Red Car' system, centered at 6th and Main Streets in Los Angeles. Huntington succeeded in this competition by providing passenger friendly streetcars on 24/7 schedules, which the railroads could not match; this was facilitated by the boom in Southern California land development, where housing was built in places such as Orange County's Huntington Beach, a Huntington-sponsored development, streetcars served passenger needs that the railroads had not considered. Connectivity to Downtown Los Angeles made such suburbs feasible. By 1910, the Huntington trolley systems spanned 1,300 miles of southern California.
At its greatest extent, the system contained over 20 streetcar lines and 1,250 trolleys, most running through the core of Los Angeles and serving such nearby neighborhoods as the Crenshaw district, West Adams, Echo Park, Hancock Park, Exposition Park, Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights. The system integrated the 1902 acquisition, the Mount Lowe Scenic Railway above Altadena, California in the San Gabriel Mountains. In 1905 Huntington, A. Kingsley Macomber, William R. Staats developed the Oak Knoll subdivision, located to the west of his San Marino estate in the oak-covered hilly terrain near Pasadena. In 1906, along with Frank Miller, owner of the Mission Inn, Charles M. Loring, formed the Huntington Park Association, with the intent to purchase Mount Rubidoux in Riverside, build a road to the summit, develop the hill as a park to benefit the city of Riverside; the road was completed in February 1907. The property was donated to the city of Riverside by the heirs of Frank Miller, today the hill is a 161-acre city park.
Huntington was a Life Member of the Sons of the Revolution in the State of California. Huntington retired from business in 1916. In 1927 Henry E. Huntington died in Philadelphia, he and Arabella are buried, with a large monument, in the Gardens of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. The Huntington Hotel was named Hotel Wentworth when it opened on February 1, 1907. Financial problems and a disappointing first season forced it to close indefinitely. Henry Huntington purchased the Wentworth in 1911, it reopened in 1914, transformed into a winter resort. The 1920s were prosperous for the hotel, as Midwestern and Eastern entrepreneurs discovered California's warm winter climate; the hotel's reputation for fine service began with long-time general manager and owner Stephen W. Royce. By 1926, the hotel's success prompted Royce to open the property year-round; the "golden years" ended with the stock market crash and the Great Depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s. By the end of the 1930s the hotel was vibrant again.
When World War II began, all reservations were cancelled and the hotel was rented to the Army for $3,000 a month. Following the war, the Huntington's fortunes improved again. In 1954 Stephen Royce sold the hotel to the Sheraton Corporation, serving as general manager until his retirement in 1969; the hotel operated until 1985. The structure was built of un-reinforced concrete in 1906. After a two-and-a-half year major renovation, the hotel reopened in March 1991 as the Ritz Carlton Huntington Hotel and Spa; the hotel completed a $19 million renovation in January 2006. Huntington left a prominent legacy with the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens on his former estate in San Marino near Pasadena. Other legacies in California include the cities of Huntington Beach and Huntington Park, as well as Huntington Lake. In greater Los Angeles are the Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, Henry E. Huntington Middle School in San Marino, the grand boulevard, Huntington Drive, running eastbound from downtown Los Angeles.
Its landscaped central parkway was the right-of-way for the Norther
United States
California
