Railroad Executive and Philanthropist. Known as H. Walter Webb, he was the son of newspaper publisher and diplomat James Watson Webb (1802-1884). Walter Webb graduated from Columbia College in 1873 and Columbia Law School in 1875, and became an attorney in New York City. While a student at Columbia, he took part in the famed Orton expedition that traced the Amazon River nearly to its source. When his brother, William Seward Webb, married a daughter of William H. Vanderbilt and became active in the Vanderbilt family businesses, Walter Webb joined him as an executive of the Wagner Palace Car Company, which later merged with the Pullman Company. Walter Webb later became an executive with the New York Central Railroad, serving as primary assistant to company President and future US Senator Chauncey Depew. Webb was also a Director of the National City Bank and more than twenty other companies and banks. An advocate of high speed rail travel, he was instrumental in helping produce the first passenger train that consistently averaged more than 60 miles an hour. Afflicted by several health problems, he retired from the New York Central in the mid 1890s, but maintained his directorships while living on a country estate in Scarborough. Active in dog breeding, Webb was Show Chairman of the Westminster Kennel Club while his brother Alexander Stewart Webb was the club's President. He also served on the New York State Board of Education and was a Major in the New York National Guard. In 1891 he was a subscriber to the Blackstone Memorial, a petition signed by famous and wealthy individuals throughout the United States that asked President Benjamin Harrison to assist in restoring Palestine as a Jewish homeland. Webb was also a major benefactor of several museums, libraries and other institutions throughout the state of New York, and in 1894 was one of the donors of the Christopher Columbus statue in New York City's Central Park.