He has been described by author Parke S. Rouse, Jr. as a "one-man industry", serving as Old Point's representative of shipping companies, postmaster, notary public, insurance agent and U.S. commissioner.
[2] Phoebus built additions to his hotel, chartered boats to bring visitors, and soon Old Point Comfort was on its way to becoming a place where diplomats and government officials mingled with the elite of Baltimore, Philadelphia, Richmond and the Deep South.
[2] Harrison Phoebus is credited with persuading Collis Huntington's Chesapeake & Ohio Railway to extend its tracks of the Peninsula Subdivision from Newport News to the community.
In 1902, Secretary of the Army Elihu Root signed an order authorizing the demolition of the Hygeia Hotel to make space for a planned expansion of Fort Monroe.
[3] Roseland Manor, a Châteauesque Queen Anne style mansion designed by Arthur Crooks and situated on a well landscaped estate overlooking Hampton Roads, that Phoebus was having built for his family was completed after his untimely death.