Brookgreen Gardens Ever Changing. Simply Amazing
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The Huntingtons Originally, their plan was to establish a winter home overlooking the wide, blue Atlantic, but the beauty and history of the land quickly transformed their modest intention into something more grand. In 1931, they organized a non-profit institution with a lofty mission: providing a showcase for American figurative sculpture within a refuge for native plants and animals. A year later, they opened Brookgreen to the public. It is the first sculpture garden in the United States and designated as a National Historic Landmark.
Archer Milton Huntington (1870-1955) was the son of industrial magnate Collis Potter Huntington (1821-1900), who with Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford and Charles Crocker helped build the first transcontinental railroad. Collis Huntington was also the founder of Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Virginia. He was a forceful man, sometimes known as a “Robber Baron,” but exemplifying the nation’s leadership in this period of rapid growth and expansion. Collis Huntington’s second wife, Arabella Duval Yarrington (1847?-1924), Archer’s mother, was an accomplished woman, who was a connoisseur and collector of art. She traveled widely and guided her son’s education, allowing him to be exposed to history, art and other cultures. Archer became an expert in Hispanic culture and study of the people of the Mediterranean region. While involved in his father’s business interests, Archer devoted most of his energies to his special pursuits of history, art and linguistics. His knowledge of museums was extensive because of his travels and personal study in Europe. In 1904, Archer established The Hispanic Society of America at New York City’s Audubon Terrace. Today, this institution is the foremost of its kind and continues to perform the purposes for which it was founded. He also supported a number of cultural organizations internationally.
Archer’s wife was Anna Vaughn Hyatt (1876-1973), a daughter of Alpheus Hyatt, Jr. (1838-1902), a scientist who specialized in paleontology and was a pioneer marine biologist connected with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Anna grew up in a family devoted to science and cultural pursuits and as a teenager became interested in sculpture. Although she studied briefly in Boston and at the Art Students League, Anna really was a self-taught sculptor. Her knowledge of animal anatomy, the basis for her sculpture, was the result of a keen power of observation developed through childhood field trips with her father and familiarity with domestic animals on the family farm. Early on, the horse emerged as Anna’s favorite subject and she began to incorporate equine subjects into her monumental commissions. By 1910, she had created the initial Joan of Arc on horseback, forerunner of her most famous work for New York City, which won her great critical and popular acclaim. By 1912, she was earning more than $50,000 a year with her sculpture. Known as one of the finest American animal sculptors of the twentieth century, she created work that was placed in public locations throughout the country and around the world, as well as in numerous museum and private collections. Anna married Archer Huntington on March 10, 1923, a date which was also their shared birthday and was known afterward as their “three-in-one-day.”
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The names and narratives are countless and fascinating, but no story is more interesting than that of Brookgreen Gardens' visionary founders, Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington. The Huntingtons first visited the property in 1929. They were captivated by the Carolina Lowcountry with its undulating rivers and shadowy swamplands, sandy pine forests, sweeping marsh vistas and stately moss-draped oaks. So, the philanthropist and his beloved sculptor wife bought Brookgreen Plantation and the three adjoining properties, amassing 9,127 acres of forest, swamp, rice fields and beachfront.