During World War I, Huntington participated in the war effort by waiting tables for American soldiers in
Brest and
Bordeaux.
Arts patronage in 1962 Huntington was a lover of music and opera (she attended her first opera when she was two) and, therefore, helped to found the
New York City Center and the
New York City Opera. She was a patron of the
Metropolitan Opera on Broadway. She owned two
boxes at the opera house, one she used herself and one she kept for her guests. In 1966, she was among those who attended the closing gala at the Met on Broadway and helped found its re-opening at
Lincoln Center. She attended the inauguration gala night at
Philharmonic Hall, directed by her friend
Leonard Bernstein.
Among the Sierra Nevada, California is an 1868 oil painting by
Albert Bierstadt. It was acquired in 1873 by William Brown Dinsmore, Huntington's grandfather; when Huntington inherited the painting, she had the canvas glued directly to a curved wall on the second floor of her new mansion,
Locusts on Hudson. Huntington was a good friend of
Elsa Maxwell,
Cole Porter, and
Maury Henry Biddle Paul (aka Cholly Knickerbocker).
Political hostess When, in 1913, Astor was asked if his future wife, Helen Huntington, believed in suffrage for women, he replied that she was far too sensible for that. In 1924, Huntington was an alternate delegate for New York to the
Republican National Convention and in 1926 and 1927 she co-chaired the Women's
Republican National Committee for New York. She was a guest at the
United States presidential inaugural balls of four different U.S. presidents: Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover,
Dwight D. Eisenhower, and
Richard Nixon. She was a good friend of
Nelson Rockefeller and his wife,
Happy Rockefeller. In 1941, Helen inherited Staatsburg on Hudson from her maternal grandfather, William Brown Dinsmore II, head of Adams Express Company, a railroad and shipping concern. She demolished the previous mansion to build a much lighter house, known as
Locusts on Hudson, that was designed by architect John Churchill in the Neobaroque style. Her family had deep roots in politics. At Locusts on Hudson, she held her gala fundraising events and raised her six dogs, and at Hopeland House, she hosted her Republican political fundraising events, attended by the likes of former U.S. presidents
Herbert Hoover and
Calvin Coolidge. ==Personal life==