Peter Arrell Browne Widener (November 13, 1834 – November 6, 1915) was an American businessman, art collector, and patriarch of the wealthy Widener family. He began his career as a butcher, ran a successful chain of meat stores, and won a lucrative contract to supply mutton to Union army troops during the American Civil War. He partnered with William Lukens Elkins to found the Philadelphia Traction Company and established electric trolley systems in several major cities in the United States.

Widener was ranked #29 on the American Heritage list of the forty richest Americans in history, with a net worth at death of $44 billion to $48 billion (in 2024 dollars).^[1]

Widener was born on November 13, 1834, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,^[2] to Johannes Widener and Sarah Fulmer.^[3] He was named after Peter Arrell Browne,^[4] a lawyer in Philadelphia.^[5] He attended the public schools in Philadelphia.^[3]

He began his career as a butcher and established a successful business with a chain of meat stores.^[2] During the American Civil War, Widener won a contract to supply mutton to all Union army troops within 10 miles of Philadelphia.^[1] The city was a major transportation hub for troop deployment, and the location of many of the largest Union military hospitals. Widener invested his $50,000 profit in horse-drawn city streetcar lines.^[1] He grew to prominence in Philadelphia politics, and had become the City Treasurer by 1871.^[5][6] In 1883, he was a founding partner in the Philadelphia Traction Company, which electrified the city's trolley lines, and expanded into other major cities in the United States.

He and his business partner, William L. Elkins, invested with businessmen such as Charles Tyson Yerkes, the streetcar czar of Chicago. Widener used the great wealth accumulated from public transportation to become a founding organizer of U.S. Steel and the American Tobacco Company, as well as to acquire substantial holdings in Standard Oil and International Mercantile Marine Company. He is considered to have been among the 100 wealthiest Americans, having left an enormous fortune.^[7]

He served on the Philadelphia Board of Education from 1867 to 1870, as the Philadelphia City Treasurer from 1870 to 1877, and as the Philadelphia City Park Commissioner in 1890.^[3] His appointment as City Treasurer came from the local boss of the infamous Matthew Quay political machine.^[8]

He died on November 6, 1915, at Lynnewood Hall in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania having suffered from poor health for three years.^[9][5]. He was interred at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.^[10]

After his death, his estate was valued at $31,589,353.^[11] By 1945, the accumulated income plus the current value of the real and personal property totaled $98,368,058.^[11]

He married Hannah Josephine Dunton on August 18, 1858.^[3] They had three sons. His first son Harry died young, from typhoid fever. His son George Dunton Widener died during the sinking of the Titanic. His youngest son Joseph Early Widener was a noted art collector. His grandson, George D. Widener Jr., a noted horse racing figure, was also the chairman of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.^[12]

In 1887, Widener built an ornate mansion, designed by Willis G. Hale, in Philadelphia, at the northwest corner of Broad Street and Girard Avenue. He vacated it 13 years later and donated it (as a memorial for his late wife) to the Free Library of Philadelphia, which used it as a branch library from 1900 to 1946. The building burned in 1980, and was demolished.

In 1900, he completed Lynnewood Hall in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, a 110-room Georgian-style mansion designed by Horace Trumbauer. Widener was an avid art collector,^[13] with a collection that included more than a dozen paintings by Rembrandt, as well as works by then-new artists Édouard Manet and Auguste Renoir.

Widener amassed a significant art collection that included works by Old Masters such as Vermeer, Rembrandt, Raphael and El Greco, British 18th- and 19th-century paintings, and works by French Impressionist artists such as Corot, Renoir, Degas and Manet.

About 1905, he purchased the crucifixion panel from Rogier van der Weyden's Crucifixion Diptych (c.1460) in Paris. The following year he sold it to John G. Johnson, who reunited the two halves and later donated them to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.^[14]

Widener's son Joseph donated more than 300 works—including paintings, sculpture, metalwork, stained glass, furniture, rugs, Chinese porcelains, and majolica—to the National Gallery of Art in 1942.^[15]

The following works of art are all now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., unless otherwise noted:

• 
  Crucifixion (c.1460) by Rogier van der Weyden, Philadelphia Museum of Art
• 
  The Small Cowper Madonna (c.1505) by Raphael
• 
  The Schoolmaster (1575) by Giovanni Battista Moroni
• 
  Saint Martin and the Beggar (1597-1599) by El Greco
• 
  Marchesa Elena Grimaldi (c.1623) by Anthony van Dyck
• 
  The Mill (1645-1648) by Rembrandt van Rijn
• 
  Portrait of a Gentleman with a Tall Hat and Gloves (1656) by Rembrandt
• 
  Portrait of a Lady with an Ostrich-Feather Fan (1656) by Rembrandt
• 
  The Dancing Couple (1663) by Jan Steen
• 
  Woman Holding a Balance (c.1664) by Vermeer

• 
  Lady Elizabeth Hamilton (1758) by Sir Joshua Reynolds
• 
  The Honorable Mrs. Thomas Graham (c.1777-1778) by Thomas Gainsborough
• 
  The Hoppner Children (1791) by John Hoppner
• 
  Wivenhoe Park, Essex (1816) by John Constable
• 
  Venice–The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore (1834) Joseph Mallord William Turner
• 
  Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight (1835) by Joseph Mallord William Turner

• 
  The Dead Toreador (1864) by Édouard Manet
• 
  The Artist's Studio (c.1868) Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
• 
  The Dancer (1874) by Auguste Renoir
• 
  Before the Ballet (1890-1892) by Edgar Degas

• Rhône (The) v. Peter A.B. Widener (The) (a barge named after Widener was involved in a collision in Canada, which became a noted court case)
• Widener University

Citations

Sources

• Baltzell, E. Digby (2017). Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781351495349.