Philip Gengembre Hubert


Philip Gengembre Hubert, Sr., AIA, was a founder of the New York City architectural firm Hubert & Pirsson with James W. Pirsson. 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 own 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 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 and 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 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: