Philip Gengembre Hubert

Philip Gengembre Hubert, Sr., AIA, (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. His sister was artist Sophie Gengembre Anderson. Hubert emigrated with his parents in 1849 to the United States, first settling in Cincinnati, Ohio. In Cincinnati, he taught French by writing his textbooks, "which were published and widely used in schools of that time." In 1853, he took up a position at Girard College in Philadelphia 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 studied 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. He became associated with Pirsson to design six single-family residences on the southwest corner of Lexington Avenue and East 43rd Street. Upon Pirsson's death, the firm operated under the name Hubert, Pirsson & Haddick until 1893 when Hubert retired to California. In retirement, he "took several 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…."