Henry Villard (April 10, 1835 – November 12, 1900) was an American journalist and financier who was an influential leader and the sixth president of the Northern Pacific Railway (1881–1884) which completed its trans-continental route during his tenure in 1883.

Born and raised by Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard in the historic ancient Roman Empire border fortification, then Medieval / Middle Ages town of Speyer, along the Rhine River in the Rhenish Palatinate of the Kingdom of Bavaria.

It was also significant because with the quick decisive Prussian military victory over the neighboring Austrian Empire enabled the rising Kingdom of Prussia under dynamic Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898, served Prussia 1862–1871 / Imperial Germany 1871–1890), to exclude Austria and its ruling Habsburg imperial dynasty from future German affairs and to then lead and dominate the unification campaign to create a new centralized German Empire in Central Europe.

His parents moved to Zweibrücken in 1839, and in 1856 his father, Gustav Leonhard Hilgard (who died in 1867), became a justice of the Supreme Court of Bavaria, at Munich.

[5] Villard entered a Gymnasium (equivalent of a United States high school) in Zweibrücken in 1848, which he had to leave because he sympathized with the revolutions of 1848 in Germany.

He had broken up a class by refusing to mention the King of Bavaria in a prayer, justifying his omission by citing his loyalty to the provisional government.

Two of his uncles were strongly in sympathy with the revolution, but his father was a conservative, and disciplined him by sending the boy to continue his education at the French semi-military academy in Phalsbourg (1849–50).

[5][7] On emigrating to America, he adopted the name Villard, the surname of a French schoolmate at Phalsbourg, to conceal his identity from anyone intent on making him return to Germany.

In 1856-57 he was editor, and for part of the time was proprietor of the Racine Volksblatt, in which he advocated the election of presidential candidate John C. Frémont of the newly founded Republican Party.

Thereafter he was associated with the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, for which he covered the Lincoln-Douglas debates;[6] Frank Leslie's; the New York Tribune; and with the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette.

[2] During the Civil War, he was correspondent for the New York Tribune (with the Army of the Potomac, 1862–63) and was at the front as the representative of a news agency established by him in that year at Washington (1864).

[4] He returned to the United States from his correspondent duties in Europe in June 1868, and shortly afterward was elected secretary of the American Social Science Association, to which he devoted his labors until 1870, when he went to Germany for his health.

He was removed in 1878, but continued the contest he had begun with Jay Gould and finally obtained better terms for the bond holders than they had agreed to accept.

European investors in the Oregon and San Francisco Steamship Line, after building new vessels, became discouraged, and in 1879 Villard formed an American syndicate and purchased the property.

He then succeeded in obtaining a controlling interest in the Northern Pacific property, and organized a new corporation that was named the Oregon and Transcontinental Company.

This acquisition was achieved with the aid of a syndicate, called by the press a "blind pool", composed of friends who had loaned him $20 million without knowing his intentions.

[7][10] After some contention with the old managers of the Northern Pacific road, Villard was elected president of a reorganized board of directors on 15 September 1881.

After being mostly completed at the John Roach & Sons shipyard in Chester, Pennsylvania, the Columbia was sent to New York City, where Edison and his personnel installed its lighting system.

[12] With the aid of the Oregon and Transcontinental Company, his railroad line to the Pacific Ocean was completed, and it was opened to traffic with festivities in September 1883.

After spending the intervening time in Europe, he returned to New York City in 1886, and purchased for German capitalists large amounts of the securities of the transportation system that he was instrumental in creating, becoming again director of the Northern Pacific, and on 21 June 1888, again president of the Oregon and Transcontinental Company.

He devoted large sums to the Industrial Art School of Rhenish Bavaria, and to the foundation of fifteen scholarships for the youth of that province.

The homes are in the Romanesque Revival style with neo-Renaissance touches[39] and feature elaborate interiors by prominent artists including John La Farge, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Maitland Armstrong.