Philip Gengembre Hubert, Sr.,

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, (August 20, 1830 – November 15, 1911) was a French-American architect and founder of the New York City architectural firm Hubert & Pirsson (later Hubert, Pirsson, and Company, active from c. 1870 to 1888, and Hubert, Pirsson, and Haddick, active from 1888 to 1898) with James W. Pirsson (1833–1888). The firm produced many of the city's "Gilded Age" finest buildings, including hotels, churches and residences.

Life

Hubert was born in Paris to Colomb Gengembre, an architect and engineer who taught him architecture.C. Matlack Price
“A Pioneer in Apartment House Architecture: Memoir on Philip G. Hubert’s Work.”
''

Architectural Record ''Architectural Record'' is a US-based monthly magazine dedicated to architecture and interior design. "The Record," as it is sometimes colloquially referred to, is widely-recognized as an important historical record of the unfolding debates in a ...

''. V.36 (1914), pp. 74-76. His sister was artist

Sophie Gengembre Anderson Sophie Gengembre Anderson (1823 – 10 March 1903) was a French-born British artist who specialised in genre painting of children and women, typically in rural settings. She began her career as a lithographer and painter of portraits, collaborat ...

.''Colomb Gengembre''
. Union Dale Cemetery. Retrieved March 6, 2014. Hubert emigrated with his parents in 1849 to the United States, first settling in

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

, Ohio. In Cincinnati, he taught French by writing his own textbooks, "which were published and widely used in schools of that time." In 1853, he took up a position at

Girard College Girard College is an independent college preparatory five-day boarding school located on a 43-acre campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The school was founded and permanently endowed from the shipping and banking fortune of Stephen Girard upon ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

as the first professor of French and history; he moved to Boston and was offered a professorship at Harvard, which he did not accept. He moved to New York in 1865 and took up architecture. "As a young man, he contributed a large number of short and serial stories to magazines—of a versatile turn of mind he took a vivid interest in many things and conversed with keen intelligence and originality upon politics, social science, invention and literature…." He moved to New York in 1865 at the end of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

and became associated with Pirsson to design six single-family residences on the southwest corner of Lexington Avenue and East 43rd Street.New York City, Manhattan Buildings Department
Dockett Books, N.B. p.685-67; Quoted in (New York City) Landmarks Preservation Commission, "Designation List 124," March 16, 1979 Upon Pirsson's death, the firm operated under the name Hubert, Pirsson & Haddick until 1893 when Hubert retired to California. In retirement, he "took a number of patents upon devices for making housekeeping easy, among which he improved oil and gas furnaces, a fireless cooker, and, during the last six months of his life, he was busy with a device for supplying hot water more quickly and more cheaply…."

Noted works

His most notable works while at Hubert & Pirsson included: * The $5 million 12-story Central Park or Navarro Buildings (1882) on Seventh Avenue at 58th and 59th Streets *The Hawthorne, ten-story co-op *The Rembrandt, ten-story co-op *The Milano, seven-story co-op *The

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(1883), twelve-story residential hotel *The Mount Morris, nine-story co-op *No. 80 Madison Avenue, nine-story co-op *No. 125 Madison Avenue, twelve-story co-op *The Sevilla (Hotel), 58th Street *The Old Lyceum Theatre at Fourth Avenue and 23rd Street *The old Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC

Life

Noted works

See also

Notes

References

Further reading