page_title: Peter Arrell Browne Widener II
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Peter Arrell Browne Widener II / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: 1917: 'The Raphael Room at Lynnewood Hall.' The Widener's idea of filling a sarcophagus with a bright array of spring flowers is inspired!
context_page_description: Peter Arrell Browne Widener II was a prominent American racehorse owner and breeder. He inherited a fortune from his father, Joseph E. Widener, a founding benefactor of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. His father was also a major figure in Thoroughbred horse racing, being President of Belmont Park racetrack from 1925 to 1939, and builder of the 1932 Hialeah Park racetrack in Miami, Florida.
context_section_description: He was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, the elder child and only son of Joseph Early Widener (1871–1943) and his wife, Eleanor "Ella" Holmes Pancoast (1874–1929). He grew up in Palm Beach, spending winters at Il Palmetto, the Treanor & Fatio-designed South End landmark built for his parents, and on the Widener family's Lynnewood Hall estate in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. Designed by Horace Trumbauer (house) and Jacques Greber (gardens), the 110-room Georgian-style mansion, along with its extensive and important art collection, was built by his grandfather, Peter Arrell Browne Widener.
  After graduating from private school in Massachusetts in 1915, Widener went to Harvard for a year. While at Newport in July 1916, he made the papers for rescuing a daughter of prominent locals who had gone under in rough surf at Baileys Beach, and he held her in the water for 10 minutes until lifeguards arrived.
  In 1917, he went to Washington, D.C. with his father, who persuaded the Surgeon General to admit him to the Army as a Private despite having flat feet and a suspect heart condition, caused by a childhood bout of pneumonia. Widener then served in World War I with the U.S. Expeditionary Forces in France with a medical unit, tending to the wounded and also serving as an interpreter because of his fluency in French. He rose through the ranks to Sergeant and then returned to Elkins Park as 1st Lieutenant in March 1919.
  Widener spent the next few years on the Widener family's estate at Lynnewood Hall and began to breed champion German Shepherd dogs. He purchased one dog in Germany for $8,000 and in 1920, he built extensive kennels on the grounds of Lynnewood Hall. Old newspaper clippings contain photographs of the youthful-looking, well-dressed Widener with his dogs. Throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s, his German Shepherds won titles, sometimes several years in a row, at various dog shows all over the East Coast, including the Westminster Kennel Club show in New York. He later branched out to include other breeds, including Dachshunds.
caption: Raphael Room, Lynnewood Hall
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