Hubbell Family Collection - 1924-1976

1.00 Boxes

Papers, photographs, newspaper clippings and ephemera document the Hubbell family. The bulk of the material pertain to H. Willard Hubbell and his professional and personal pursuits. A few folders holds information on his father, American artist Henry Salem Hubbell.

Of note is a scrapbook with prints and newspaper clippings of the construction of the Casa Casuarina Apartments, the Miami Beach homes of Henry Salem Hubbell and the Coconut Grove community of Ye Little Wood. Also includes photographs of a trip to Jamaica and Haiti taken by Hubbell and his wife, Lydia. Images from Haiti show vernacular architecture, voodoo ceremonies and group shots with Faustin Wirkus (a United States Marine Corps officer, reputedly crowned Faustin II, King of La Gonave, an island off the coast of Haiti).

A photo album documents a trip to a sugar plantation in Moore Haven that was using the newly invented Luce Sugar Cane Harvester. Other images show cane cultivation at nearby La Belle and Canal Point. A trip to Cuba shows a harvester being assembled, views of sugar cane harvesting, social life on the plantation and views of the environs.

Several folders of loose images show the wedding of Rosemary Hubbell and Leonard Wirkus, Hubbell homes in Dade County, construction of the family home in Hammocks Lake, other dwellings under construction for clients and productions staged by the Civic Theater of Greater Miami.

Henry Salem Hubbell, well known portrait painter, settled in Miami Beach in 1924; was a founding board member of the University of Miami. His son, H. Willard Hubbell, was a produce and fruit farmer (Stambaugh-Hubbell Co., Pelican Farms) who developed greenhouses for papayas and other tropical fruit. He was also a residential contractor who built the Kampong and completed building Marjory Stoneman Douglas' Coconut Grove home after the 1926 hurricane; and taught at a business academy and at the University of Miami. Casa Casuarina, renamed Amsterdam Palace, became the designer, Gianni Versace's home during the 1990s.

The collection is open for research.

Requests to publish or display materials from this collection require written permission from HistoryMiami Museum. Please contact archives@historymiami.org for more information.

• Engels

Gift of Rosemary Hubbell Wirkus.

Posters for productions staged by the Civic Theater are housed in M103R.

Other Information

Accessions: 1976-028, 1977-096, 1979-084, 1979-117, 1979-150, 1979-213, 1981-081, X-1280.

The white king of La Gonave by Faustin Wirkus and Taney Dudley. Doubleday, Doran, 1931 gives an account of Faustin II, King of La Gonave.

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