Horatio Hollis Hunnewell (July 27, 1810 – May 20, 1902) was an American railroad financier, philanthropist, amateur botanist, and one of the most prominent horticulturists in America in the nineteenth century. Hunnewell was a partner in the private banking firm of Welles & Co., of Paris, France, controlled by his in-laws, which specialized in trade between the two countries. Practicing horticulture for nearly six decades on his estate in Wellesley, Massachusetts, he was perhaps the first person to cultivate and popularize rhododendrons in the United States.
H.H. Hunnewell was elected to The Lambs in 1900 as a non-resident member. His nephew, actor Clyde Hunnewell, who also was a Lamb.
Hunnewell was a director of the Illinois Central Railroad from 1862 to 1871. He was a railroad entrepreneur in Kansas beginning in the 1860s, and president of the Kansas City, Fort Scott and Gulf Railroad and Kansas City, Lawrence and Southern Railroad around 1880. At the time of his death he was a director of 12 railroads and numerous mining, real estate, and other ventures.
H. H. Hunnewell made a donation in 1873 that helped Asa Gray revise and complete his Flora of North America. He also funded the conifer collection at Arnold Arboretum, Boston, Massachusetts, and donated the Arboretum’s administration building (now Hunnewell Building) in 1892.
Hunnewell was a friend and neighbor of Henry Fowle Durant (1822-1881), who founded Wellesley College on Lake Waban directly across from Hunnewell’s estate. Hunnewell made a donation to the College for Eliot Dormitory in 1887, and endowed the College’s Chair of Botany in 1901.
He died at home in Wellesley, Massachusetts on May 20, 1902, at age 91. Hunnewell was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, among his family.
Both the town of Wellesley (founded 1881) and Wellesley College (chartered 1870) are named for Hunnewell’s estate, “Wellesley”, which he named for the family of his wife. The H. H. Hunnewell estate includes a prominent 1851 house designed by Arthur Gilman with attached conservatory and gate lodges of 1865-1866 designed by Gridley J.F. Bryant, a pinetum of 325 specimen conifers, a complex of specialty greenhouses, and the first topiary garden – the ‘Italian Garden’ – in America, all of which are still standing.
The railroad towns of Hunnewell, Kansas, and Hunnewell, Missouri, were named in his honor.