He was born at the
Henry House in
Bennington, Vermont, in October, 1844. He left Norwich Military School (better known as
Norwich University) at age 18, After the war he was a partner in Henry & Balch working on railroad construction in the Midwest. He moved to Seattle in 1890 to work on the
Northern Pacific Railroad's belt line around
Lake Washington, and later the
Great Northern Railway's route from
Stevens Pass in the
Cascade Mountains to
Everett on
Puget Sound. In 1906 he won a $20 million contract to build 450 miles of the
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul line from the Montana-Idaho border across
Snoqualmie Pass to Seattle, which was completed in 1909. Seventy-one years after its completion, the Pacific Extension was abandoned by the Milwaukee Road due to bankruptcy. Henry's 1901 home in the
Harvard-Belmont District on
Seattle's Capitol Hill was the first of many Victorian, Neo-classical, Colonial Revival, and Tudor Revival houses built in the early part of the century. It is noteworthy for having been built with a five-car garage at a time when automobiles were a novelty in Seattle. He was president of the Metropolitan Bank and
National Bank of Commerce in Seattle, and formed
Pacific Creosoting Company on
Bainbridge Island in 1906. A tanker which supplied creosote from Europe to this plant was named the
H.C. Henry and was sunk by a German submarine in
World War I on September 28, 1915. In 1911, after the death of a son to tuberculosis, he donated land and funds to open
Henry Sanatorium in Seattle, later renamed Firland Tuberculosis Hospital. He was an investor in, and vice president of, the Metropolitan Building Company, which developed the
Metropolitan Tract in Seattle. The 11-story Henry Building there was named for him. For his personal contributions and efforts to collect funds for the Fatherless Children of France, a charity for wartime
orphans, he was awarded the
Legion of Honor medal in 1920. He donated his art collection, which he formerly kept at his home and opened to the public for display, to the
University of Washington in 1926 and donated the funds to build a new gallery to house the collection, which was to be the
Henry Art Gallery. Henry died in his sleep in his Seattle home on June 28, 1928, and is buried at
Lake View Cemetery in Seattle.
After his life In 1934, his sons donated land (including his original house) to the city for construction of a library. This was swapped for a smaller parcel closer to the Broadway shopping district, to become the
Susan J. Henry branch of the
Seattle Public Library, named for his wife. The branch was rebuilt and renamed in 2003 to the Capitol Hill Branch. The
Snoqualmie Pass route was converted to a
Rail Trail after Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul went bankrupt in 1980. See
Iron Horse State Park.
Eagle Harbor was designated a
superfund site in 1987 due to pollution from the creosote plant. See
Pacific Creosoting Company. ==Notes==