The firm produced many of the city's "Gilded Age" finest buildings, including hotels, churches and residences.

Hubert was born in Paris to Colomb Gengembre, an architect and engineer who taught him architecture.

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.

[3] "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….

"[3] 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.