Henry Thomas Segerstrom (April 5, 1923 – February 20, 2015) was a widely recognized and esteemed American philanthropist, entrepreneur, cultural leader, and patron of the arts. Managing Partner of C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, he was the founding chairman of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, now known as the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.^[1][2]

Henry Thomas Segerstrom was born into a Swedish immigrant family in Santa Ana, California. A farming family, the Segerstroms moved from dairy farming to cultivating alfalfa, eventually specializing in the production and harvesting of lima beans. They would become the largest producers of dried lima beans in the United States.^[3]

In 1939, Henry T. Segerstrom was named valedictorian of Santa Ana High School where he also served as class president. Months later, at age 17 he enrolled in Stanford University. ^[4] His education was interrupted by World War II; he joined the war effort after Pearl Harbor, in 1942. After the war, he returned to Stanford, eventually earning a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters of Business Administration degree from Stanford Business School in 1948. In February 2008, Stanford University presented him with the prestigious Ernest C. Arbuckle Award for his lifetime of outstanding accomplishments.^[5][6] The highest honor bestowed upon alumni of Stanford's Graduate School of Business, the award recognizes individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to both managerial excellence and to addressing the changing needs of society.

Enlisting in the U.S. Army on June 24, 1942, Henry T. Segerstrom was commissioned a second lieutenant upon graduation from the Field Artillery Officer Candidate School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma on May 27, 1944.^[7] He was deployed to the European front as a second lieutenant, later rising to the rank of captain. In France, he was severely wounded in action during one of the deadliest engagements of the war, the Battle of the Bulge.^[8] Facing years of recuperation for shrapnel injuries to his hand, forearm, lower back, and forehead, he returned to California via Dibble General Hospital in Menlo Park. Determined to finish his education at Stanford University, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, then enrolled in the Stanford Graduate School of Business, earning his Masters of Business Administration. In 1945, Henry T. Segerstrom was awarded the Purple Heart and the European Theater of Operations Ribbon with Battle Star. He remained on active duty until 1947.^[9]

As managing partner of the family-owned company, C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, a commercial real estate and retail management organization established in 1898, Henry T. Segerstrom spearheaded commercial development in Orange County, California.^[10] Under his guidance, C.J. Segerstrom and Sons transformed a quiet agricultural community into a lively, international destination known as South Coast Metro.

In 1962 C.J. Segerstrom & Sons hired a land-planning consultant to lobby state highway planners to reroute the southern section of the San Diego Freeway (the 405)through Segerstrom property, the future home of the retail site they planned to develop.This freeway would provide hundreds of thousands of Southern California residents easy access between Los Angeles and San Diego. The residents in Orange County would for the first time have only a short drive to a major shopping center.

The May Co. and Sears vied for the closest location next to the soon to be completed San Diego Freeway. These stores ancored the Center. Henry Segerstrom hired the architectural firm Victor Gruen Associated to design the expansion of the Center. In March 1967, Henry T. Segerstrom, along with his cousin Hal T. Segerstrom, Jr., opened a shopping center called South Coast Plaza in one of the family's lima bean fields in rapidly growing Orange County.^[11] The design that Henry undertook had a large range point of view and long term ambitions, resulting in a retail center that would subsequently become foremost in America.^[12]

Early in his business career, Henry T. Segerstrom urged his family to utilize sections of the Segerstrom farm that had been converted by the Army into the Santa Ana Army Air Base. When the government withdrew in 1948, the land was returned to the family along with several warehouses the army had left behind.^[13] Under Segerstrom's advocacy, the buildings were leased to the family's first tenants; a cannery in Newport Harbor and a truck and transfer center in Anaheim. Later, when the Carnegie Library in Santa Ana was relocated, Segerstrom encouraged his family to purchase the building and surrounding property. The library was razed and the property was soon developed into what would become the region's first air-conditioned office building.

Later, Henry T. Segerstrom began planning for a major retail development in an unincorporated stretch of land owned by his family located between Santa Ana and Costa Mesa.^[14] Envisioning a thriving retail center, the project commenced in advance of the San Diego Freeway. Working closely with Mayor Alvin Pinkley, the Segerstroms agreed to lease water rights to Costa Mesa and in exchange, the town would pay fees equal to the municipal taxes, guaranteeing ample revenues to Costa Mesa from what would become South Coast Plaza.

In 1949, Henry T. Segerstrom was nominated for the Agricultural Stabilization Committee, winning the chairmanship.^[15] An advocate of water reclamation and desalination and a leader in assuring protection of natural water resources, Segerstrom secured agreements and obtained a $40 million grant from the federal government. Today, the region's access to water remains predicated on his early efforts. In 1957, he was elected to a four-year term on the Orange County Water District Board. Re-elected six times, he served 16 years as president.^[16]

He also became a transit organizer in 1949, bringing in bus lines and advancing the development of road construction and improved traffic flow through the 1990s. Through his involvement with the Orange County Transportation Authority, he was credited as the "father of transit in the region."^[17]

Segerstrom contributed his time, resources and leadership as a board member to numerous local, national and international institutions, serving on the boards of Bank of America, Safeco, and Southern California Edison Company, among many others. He sat on the boards of various cultural institutions including the White Nights Foundation of America, the American Friends of Versailles, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Segerstrom also served as the National Chairman of the Business Committee for the Arts, headquartered in New York City.^[18] His support for Franco-American friendship and dedication to the preservation of the arts is reflected in his involvement with organizations such as the Versailles Foundation, American Friends of Versailles, and American Friends of the Louvre.

By the 1940s there was already a considerable interest in the arts and Orange County was home to many cultural institutions. However, there were no performance spaces or any public art. The Segerstroms owned a sizable amount of land in the Orange County region, generously donating five acres in 1979 to build the foundation for a cultural center that would eventually house three cultural institutions in Orange County—the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, the Pacific Symphony, and the Pacific Chorale. By 1986, they all became one center, originally called the Orange County Performing Arts Center. The center expanded and evolved to become a performance art complex, renamed the Segerstrom Center for the Arts on January 12, 2011, in recognition of Segerstrom's generosity, contributions, and dedication.^[11]

In 2005, a gift agreement was made for the development of the pedestrian plaza common areas located with Segerstrom Center for the Arts.^[19] As part of the Cornerstone Gift Agreement, Segerstrom initially pledged $5 million to the Circle of Honor Gift fund. He subsequently committed another $40 million to the development of the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall and the overall Segerstrom Center for the Arts. A portion of the Circle of Honor Gift in the amount of $4 million was restricted for the sole purpose of funding construction costs for the pedestrian plaza and walkway areas of Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

A pioneering alliance between Carnegie Hall and the Segerstrom Center for the Arts brought programming from Carnegie Hall's Ancient Paths, Modern Voices festival celebrating Chinese culture to Southern California. This resulted in a West Coast festival presented by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County and prominent partner institutions.^[20] This marked the first time that Carnegie Hall's live festival programming reached audiences outside New York City. On June 7, 2010, Carnegie Hall presented him with the fourth Annual Medal of Excellence, which honors an executive whose accomplishments in the corporate sector complement Carnegie Hall's stature as one of the premier performance venues in the world.^[21][22] At the Gala, Clive Gillinson, Carnegie Hall's Executive and Artistic Director, presented Segerstrom with a Proclamation declaring June 7, 2010, Segerstrom Center for the Arts Day in New York.^[23]

Henry Segerstrom also spearheaded a pioneering alliance between the Segerstrom Center for the Arts and the American Ballet Theatre. For nearly every season since the Center’s inception, American Ballet Theatre has brought its most acclaimed productions to Orange County’s audiences at Segerstrom Hall while also partnering with the center on numerous commissions and prestigious premieres.^[24] Over his lifetime, Segerstrom would personally donate more than $100,000 to the company toward the advancement of their global presence and for the establishment of the American Ballet Theatre's William J. Gillespie School.^[25]

Through Henry Segerstrom's dedicated community leadership, gifts of valuable land and financial resources, commissions of critically significant architecture and sculpture, and distinctive, lifelong commitment to the cultural life of Orange County, the County has gained renown. This is exemplified in his patronage of projects such as “California Scenario,” Isamu Noguchi's sculpture garden tucked amid office buildings in Costa Mesa, which counts among the sculptor and landscape designer’s most acclaimed gardens.^[26] Commissioned in 1979 and completed in 1982, Noguchi’s "California Scenario" is recognized as one of the country’s preeminent sculpture gardens and the most vital publicly accessible outdoor sculpture oasis in Southern California. Its design symbolizes various geographical characteristics of California, incorporating indigenous plants and materials.^[27]

As the construction of the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall neared completion, Elizabeth and Henry Segerstrom commissioned Richard Serra to create The Connector as the focal point for center.^[28][29] The highly visible 65-feet-high sculpture was installed in 2006, serving the symbolic function of unifying centerpiece for the newly expanded grounds of the center.^[30] Sited on the main axis of the plaza, it encourages visitors to walk around and through it, looking up through the aperture at the top opening to the sky.

Other artists who created renowned works in Orange County under Segerstrom's sponsorship include: Marion Sampler, a pioneering black designer whose stained glass rotundum dome for South Coast Plaza--the Jewel Court Dome--was an engineering feat at 29 feet in diameter; The Ram by Charles O. Perry; window screens by Claire Falkenstein^[31]; Utsurohi 91 by Aiko Miyawaki; and the majestic Firebird by Richard Lippold built into the face of The Performing Arts Center.^[32]

Starting in 2011, curatorial consultant Bonnie Rychlak launched exhibitions focusing on the public art commissions for the plaza and grounds of Segerstrom Center for the Arts, as well as Segerstrom's purchases of artworks by George Rickey, Jean Dubuffet, Joan Miro, Jim Huntington, and Carl Milles. Among the exhibitions directed by Rychlak, artist and former curator of the Noguchi Museum and the Isamu Noguchi Foundation, was On Display in Orange County: Modern and Contemporary Sculpture, which told the story of Segerstrom's impact on the local cultural landscape.^[33] The exhibition showcased thirteen sculptures Segerstrom commissioned that are now on public view in the South Coast Metro area between South Coast Plaza and the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. The show was part of the series of events across Southern California from October 2011 to April 2012 called Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980.^[34] Rychlak subsequently authored the publication, Henry T. Segerstrom: The courage of imagination and the development of the arts in Southern California, an expansive testimony to the philanthropist's legacy.^[35]

In 2015, following Henry Segerstrom's passing, Rychlak organized the exhibition Courage of Imagination to celebrate his life and legacy. Mounted in a specially designed gallery in Jewel Court at South Coast Plaza, the exhibition chronicled Segerstorm's life story through dozens of vintage photographs, archival videos, informative descriptions and a selection of major sculptures by Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet and Joan Miró.^{[36] [37]}

After a short illness, Segerstrom died in Newport Beach, California, on February 20, 2015, at the age of 91.^[38][11]

Segerstrom is widely recognized for his service as founding chairman of the Orange County Performing Arts Center and his vital role in establishing the Centre for Social Innovation at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business.^[11]

Thanks to Henry Segerstrom's financial and visionary contributions, Orange County is now recognized for its sophisticated arts community, its civic and cultural innovation, its inventive entrepreneurial spirit and cutting edge advances in business and technology. The Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Segerstrom Hall, and Segerstrom Avenue in Santa Ana are named after him. Segerstrom High School in Santa Ana, which opened in 2005, is also named after him.

In April 2023, PBS broadcast Segerstrom: Imagining the Future. The streaming production was billed as "the story of a man who believed in great possibilities and inspired those around him."^[39]

Throughout his life, from 1971 when he was inducted into the U.S. Army Artillery Hall of Fame, to January 2024 when he was one of ten luminaries inducted into the Orange County Hall of Fame, Henry T. Segerstrom was the recipient of many honors and awards.^{[40] [41]} He was awarded Honorary Degrees of Doctor of Laws at Western State University (1986) and Whittier Law School (2002). Among numerous other noteworthy accolades, he was awarded in 1988 the Honorary title of Commander and bestowed with the Order of the Polar Star by the King of Sweden. In 1995, he was presented the prestigious Tree of Life Award of the Jewish National Fund by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for his efforts in developing desalination plants in Southern California.^[42].

A selected list of additional honors and awards includes:^[43][11]

1971 Citizen of the Year, Coast Community College

1977 Mardan Award, Mardan Center for Educational Therapy

1981 Meritorious Achievement in the Arts Award, Orange County Arts Alliance; Award for Community Service in the Architectural Profession, Orange County Chapter of the American Institute of Architects

1982 First Patron of the Arts Award, Orange County Master Chorale; First Golden Baton Award, Philharmonic Society of Orange County; Headliner of the Year in Business, Orange County Press Club^[44]

1983 Man of the Year, Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce; Champion of the Year, March of Dimes; Honorary Board Award, South Coast Repertory

1984 Distinguished Achievement Award, National Business Committee for the Arts

1985 Arts & Humanities Award, National Watercolor Society; Ninth Annual Service Award, National Theatre Council

1986 Outstanding Executive in Entertainment and Leisure, Executive Magazine; Thomas Jefferson Award, America Society of Interior Designers; Medici Award, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

1988 Leonardo da Vinci Award,^[45] California Confederation of the Arts; Distinguished Achievement Award, National Business Committee for the Arts (Annual awards in 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987); Tony Award Winner, South Coast Repertory Theatre, Elected as Second Member - Honorary Board

1990 Man of the Decade Award, The Metropolitan Journal

1992 Los Angeles Beautiful Business and Industry Award, Los Angeles Beautiful, Inc.; Lifetime Achievement Award, University of California Irvine, Paul Merage School of Business

1993 The BCA Leadership Award, National Business Committee for the Arts.^[46]

1994 Environmental Building Award, American Institute of Architects; Ellis Island Medal of Honor, American Legends Award, National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations Foundations, Inc.

1995 A Key to the City, City of Santa Ana, in recognition of commitment to the arts and culture of Santa Ana; Named Founding Chairman for Life, Orange County Performing Arts Center

1997 Hall of Fame inductee, California Cultural Tourism; 30-year Block AS Service Pin, Stanford Associates

1998 Ethics in America Award, Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce; Hall of Fame inductee, California Tourism Hall of Fame

1999 Art in Public Places Award, Architectural Foundation of Orange County; Orange County Daily Pilot, #1 of 103 Most Influential People of the Newport Beach-Costa Mesa Community

2000 Helena Modjeska Cultural Legacy Award, Community Visionary, Arts in Orange County^[47]

2001 Recognition of Leadership to Community and County, Freedom Foundation of Valley Forge; Honorable Mention for the Bridge of Gardens, Orange County Engineering Council; Director of the Year, Forum for Corporate Directors

2003 Honorary Committee Member, The Freedom Committee of Orange County; Segerstrom Lifetime Achievement Award, Orange County Business Council; Hall of Fame inductee, U.S. Army Artillery School, Fort Sill, Oklahoma

2005 Legacy Award, Orange County Tourism Industry Arts; Visionary Award, Ballet Pacifica; Legacy Prix d'Honneur, Business Committee for the Arts, Orange County.^[48]

2006 Art in Public Places Award, The Architecture Foundation of Orange County

2007 Hall of Fame-Sigma Chi, Stanford Associates, Stanford University; CELSOC-Award of Excellence for Reneé and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Consulting Engineers & Land Surveyors of California; Visionary Leadership Award, Planning Directors Association of Orange County

2008 The Ernest C. Arbuckle Award, Stanford Graduate School of Business; Founder's Circle, Stanford University; Julian Shulman Communication Award, Woodbury University ^[49]

2009 Award of Excellence-California Scenario (Noguchi Garden), Orange County Chapter of the American Institute of Architects

2010 Carnegie Hall's fourth Annual Medal of Excellence and declaration of June 7, 2010, as Segerstrom Center for the Arts Day in New York^[50][51]

2012 The Dizzy Feet Foundation Award, in recognition of dance education across the United States, presented by the Music Center and Ovation;^[52]

2013 Lifetime Achievement Award, Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce and South Coast Metro Alliance ^[53]

2014 Coaster Lifetime Achievement Award, Coast Magazine Community Awards

2015 Difference Makers-Santa Ana Person of the Year, Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce

2016 Hall of Fame inductee, Stanford Professionals in Real Estate^[54]

David Finn and Judith A. Jedlicka, The Art of Leadership: Building Business-Arts Alliances (Abbeville Press, 1999) Pages mentioned: 1, 21, 60-65
ISBN 0-7892-0566-1

Janet E. Graebner, Orange County, an economic celebration (Windsor Publishing, 1988).
ISBN 0897812433

Richard W. Keusink, Fire Mission: 109 The history of Stanford University's Class of 1944, Officer Candidate Class 109 and the experiences of its members in World War II (R.W. Keusink and R.I. Farrar, 1999)
ASIN: B0006RQ01A

Bonnie Rychlak, Henry T. Segerstrom: The courage of imagination and the development of the arts in Southern California. (New York and Paris: Assouline, 2013). ISBN 9781614281047

Kerry Swank, Orange County Today: A Place Like No Other (Pioneer Publications, 1995)
ISBN 1-881547-20-5

Official website: Henry Segerstrom
PBS Documentary: Henry T. Segerstrom: Imagining the Future
Segerstrom Center for the Arts
Pioneering Spirit: Exhibit Walkthrough
Henry T. Segerstrom: The Courage of Imagination and the Development of the Arts in Southern California