1. Henry Walters was noted as an art collector and philanthropist, a founder of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland, which he donated to the city in his 1931 will for the benefit of the public.
19 Facts About Henry Walters
1. 2.
Henry Walters was selected as second vice president in 1913, a position he held until his death.
3.
Henry Walters graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, in 1869.
4.
Henry Walters did graduate work in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University from 1869 to 1872.
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In 1889, Henry Walters moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, to serve as general manager of his father's company, the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.
6.
Under his leadership, the railroad experienced rapid growth until World War I In 1902, Walters took control of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.
7.
In New York City, Henry Walters lived with Pembroke and Sarah Jones, two friends he had met in Wilmington, North Carolina.
8.
Henry Walters seldom returned to Baltimore other than to attend board meetings of the Safe Deposit and Trust Company.
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Three years after Pembroke Jones' death in 1919, Henry Walters married the widow Sarah Jones in 1922.
10.
Henry Walters purchased the contents of a palace in Rome that contained over 1,700 pieces.
11.
In September 1900, Henry Walters bought the three houses adjoining the property owned by his father in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, in order to house and display the full collection.
12.
Henry Walters had the site designed and adapted as a palazzo-style building, which opened to the public in 1909 as the Walters Art Gallery.
13.
Henry Walters donated four public bath houses to the City of Baltimore.
14.
Henry Walters envisaged a museum that would fulfill an educational role within the community, but initially made modest additions to his father's collection.
15.
In 1900 Henry Walters bought Raphael's Madonna of the Candelabra, which had passed through both the Borghese and Bonaparte family collections.
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Henry Walters agreed to buy the collection for the sum of five million Italian lire, equivalent at the time to $1.0 million.
17.
Henry Walters enhanced the breadth of the 19th-century holdings with such early works as Ingres' The Betrothal of Raphael and the Niece of Cardinal Bibbiena, bought in 1903.
18.
Henry Walters continued to augment his holdings, buying both in New York and abroad.
19.
Henry Walters collected Egyptian, ancient Near Eastern, and Islamic art, as well as a number of key classical and western medieval objects.