Harry Chandler (1864–1944) was an American newspaper publisher and investor. He was the owner of the largest real estate empire in the U.S. and the publisher and owner of the Los Angeles Times 1917–44.
Born in Landaff, New Hampshire, Chandler was primarily responsible for remaking Los Angeles from a town of 12,000 into a metropolis of nearly 2 million. He became Los Angeles’s largest landowner, investing in property and businesses throughout the area. In the process, he expanded areas such as the San Fernando Valley and the Hollywood Hills, accumulating great wealth.
In 1917 Chandler followed his father-in-law, Harrison Gray Otis (1837–1917,) as the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, directing it into the most potent and successful newspaper on the West Coast. Chandler also significantly developed the reach of the Times, and by 1941 the paper had a daily circulation of 320,000 with 615,000 on Sundays.
Chandler was a prominent eugenicist as president of the Los Angeles Times, supporting a weekly column titled “Social Eugenics,” which in 1936 praised “the movement in Germany and other Nordic countries of Europe for the elimination of reproduction of the unfit.”
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