Huntington Library

Getting in: The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens opened to the public in 1928. Admission was free. It started charging admission 13 years ago. Today the cost is $15 (weekdays), $20 (weekends and holidays). Hours: 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily (except Tuesdays). -- The beginning: Completed in 1911, the Beaux-Arts mansion (now the Huntington Art Gallery), was designed by architect Myron Hunt and cost $454,000. The San Marino property comprises 207 acres, of which 120 are botanical gardens.

Steven S. KOBLIK wants to make a point. He strides into the president's conference room, across the hall from his office at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, and stops in front of three framed photographs. Shot in the 1880s by Carleton E. Watkins, the images depict the San Fernando Valley and Santa Monica as pristine landscapes and downtown Los Angeles as a fledgling commercial center with Hispanic-flavored architecture. "These photographs say: 'We are a young place and a Mexican-Spanish place.

Far from the frenetic pace of modern China, hidden behind a Wall of the Colorful Clouds in suburban San Marino, a placid garden links botany with poetry and a scattered ethnic community with the elegant grandeur of its ancient civilization. In the 12-acre site on the grounds of the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, colorful carp glide through a shimmering lake. Chinese bamboo mingles with California live oaks.

Tea drinkers descended on Inviting the Mountains Terrace to gaze at the San Gabriel peaks in the distance. Children romped across the arched Jade Ribbon Bridge. Men in cowboy hats and women in colorful silk jackets strolled along the Corridor of Water and Clouds, pausing to marvel at scholars' rocks and moon gates.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens may have a very British image, but no sooner did it open a Chinese garden than it put a spotlight on its French art collection. "French Art at the Huntington," a lavishly illustrated catalog of sculpture, painting and decorative arts -- written by a team of experts and edited by Shelley M.

Originally THE residence of Southern Pacific Railroad heir Henry E. Huntington and his second wife, Arabella, the Huntington Art Gallery, that most genteel Beaux-Arts structure with a Mediterranean twist, first rose up on the Pasadena landscape in 1911. It was an early Southern California foray into domestic grandeur of Rockefellerian proportions.

Science historian Dan Lewis opened the green cloth cover of "The Origin of Species," Charles Darwin's classic work on evolutionary biology, and flipped to Page 20. And there, in the 11th line of text, was the telltale typo: "Speceies." That misprint marked the book as one of the 1,250 copies originally published in London in 1859.

The Bonsai-a-Thon at the Huntington had barely gotten underway Saturday morning, but Alex Marien had already dropped nearly $200 on pots and plants. "It's an expensive hobby," said Marien, an engineer who lives in Upland and planned to spend the entire day in San Marino with his wife, Hedy, watching demonstrations by bonsai practitioners and browsing the bonsai bazaar, with its stacks of how-to books, hand-thrown pots and lethal-looking branch benders, shears and trunk splitters.

THE CACTUS' ONCE-muscular green trunks have withered to a pallid brown. Some visitors think the plant is dead. But to the staff at the Huntington Botanical Gardens, this \o7Cereus xanthocarpus\f7 embodies the essence of the desert: rugged beauty and perseverance. "This is a garden of survivors," says Gary Lyons, curator of the Huntington's Desert Garden, which celebrates its 100th birthday this year.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino is moving to reduce the crowds on its popular monthly Free Day. In September, it will start requiring ticket reservations. Free Day, which began in 1996, allows visitors to see the Huntington at no charge on the first Thursday of each month. Recently, the membership office says, as many as 12,000 people have shown up, leading to concern about the security of the exhibits.