Herbert L. Pratt

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Herbert Lee Pratt (21 November 1871, Brooklyn, New York - 3 February 1945, New York) was a leading figure in the US oil industry.

He was the son of Charles Pratt. He took a degree of Bachelor of Arts at Amherst College in 1895.

On 28 April 1897, he married Florence Gibb, and they had five children. Like his father before him, he was a leading figure in the US oil industry, and head of Standard Oil Co., New York, from 1923. This company eventually became Mobil. Pratt was on the front cover of Time on 11 June 1923.

His family estate, "The Braes", Glen Cove, Long Island is now the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture. It was built in 1912, the largest of the Pratt mansions at Glen Cove, and designed by James Brite in the neo-Jacobean style.

In 1910, he bought the 9,000 acre Good Hope plantation and hunting lodge in South Carolina (about five miles from Ridgeland) from Harry B. Hollins, also of Long Island.

Pratt was an art collector, particularly portraits and miniatures. When Rotherwas Court, Herefordshire, was dismantled and auctioned in 1913, Pratt purchased the dining room for his neo-Jacobean mansion "The Braes," then under construction. His bequest to Amherst College included the Rotherwas Room and over eighty American portraits and miniatures, as well as an extensive collection of decorative arts. Rotherwas Room was incorporated into the Mead Art Museum when it was built at Amherst College in 1949.

He died in New York on 3 February 1945, aged 73.