Present site of Buhl Planetarium
http://buhlplanetarium3.tripod.com/photoalbumBuhl.htm
Little has
been written about the fifteen years Gengembre spent in Allegheny except for
reports concerning the commission that turned out to be his last. Gengembre provided the designs for the
Allegheny City Hall pro bono, delivering the plans sometime between 1862 and
1863. Donating his talent to create the
city hall of his adopted home was a grand gesture on his part that was met with
an offer from Allegheny Government cronies to share in the graft from inflated costs
that they planned to build into the project.
Gengembre was said to be so appalled at the American lack of morals that
he swore off speaking English for the rest of his life. He died in 1863.
Gengembre’s daughter, Sophie Anderson, was an
artist who specialized in portraiture and her work is most often classified as
Pre Raphaelite. She married British
artist Walter Anderson and enjoyed a successful career. Her brother, Philip, changed his last name
from the unpronounceable Gengembre to his mother’s maiden name of Hubert. As Philip Hubert, he moved to New York City
where he designed buildings that supported cooperatively owned apartments, a
concept credited to him. The Hubert
Home Clubs were designed for middle class workers and owed much to his father’s
brief stint working for Utopian thinker, Charles Fourier. Hubert’s cooperative designs included the
Navarro “Spanish Flats” Apartments as well as the Chelsea Hotel.
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