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5 unusual facts about Henry Lee Higginson


Boston Pops Orchestra

In 1881, Henry Lee Higginson, the founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, wrote of his wish to present in Boston "concerts of a lighter kind of music."

Henry Lee Higginson

In 1891, Higginson established the Morristown School for young men, now the Morristown-Beard School, declining to be named as the school's founder.

Reluctantly at first, out of desperation, he started on January 1, 1868, as a clerk and later became a junior partner in his father’s business, Lee, Higginson & Co., which at the time was a modest brokerage.

Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin

The painting was donated to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1893 by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Lee Higginson following their New York auction purchase in 1889.

Wilhelm Gericke

His fame as a conductor, and particularly as a drillmaster, induced Henry Lee Higginson of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) to secure him as its leader after attending one of Gericke's concerts in Vienna.


Bela Pratt

During this time, Pratt sculpted a series of busts of Boston's intellectual community, including Episcopal priest Phillips Brooks (1899, Brooks House, Harvard University), Colonel Henry Lee (1902, Memorial Hall, Harvard University), and Boston Symphony Orchestra founder Henry Lee Higginson (1909, Symphony Hall, Boston).


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