17 Facts About Bela Hubbard

Bela Hubbard was a 19th-century naturalist, geologist, writer, historian, surveyor, explorer, lawyer, real estate dealer, lumberman and civic leader of early Detroit, Michigan, United States.

Later, Bela Hubbard surveyed many of the regions around Lake Superior, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

Bela Hubbard, second son of Phebe and Thomas Hill Hubbard was born in Hamilton, New York.

Bela Hubbard graduated from Hamilton College in 1834, and in the spring of 1835 moved to Detroit, Michigan, to help manage the family's farm and land agency.

Bela Hubbard was quick-deeded ownership of the two-hundred-and-fifty acre Knaggs farm at Springwells on the river southwest of Detroit.

Bela Hubbard used his farm not solely as a means of production but to apply scientific principles towards the advancement of agriculture.

Bela Hubbard surveyed the Huron Mountains area of Marquette and Baraga Counties with William Ives in 1845 and 1846.

Bela Hubbard surveyed parts of Houghton and Ontonagon Counties in those years with Sylvester Higgins.

Also in 1846 Bela Hubbard edited and published with William Austin Burt a report on the copper region based on Houghton's notes from his 1845 survey.

Bela Hubbard consulted Andrew Jackson Downing's works on the subject and became enamored with the author's philosophy of country living in a romantic villa surrounded by semi-natural parks and gardens.

In 1853 Bela Hubbard contracted with famed New York architect Alexander Jackson Davis to design several homes.

Davis advised Bela Hubbard to visit Llewellyn Park, a garden suburb that was one of the nation's first planned communities, and to inspect Haskell's Italian villa.

Bela Hubbard was a Trustee of the State Asylums for the Insane and for the Deaf and Dumb and served as trustee of the Detroit Museum of Art, a precursor to the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Bela Hubbard donated a significant amount of land to the City of Detroit to serve as the Western Boulevard which is West Grand Boulevard, a major thoroughfare in the city of Detroit.

Bela Hubbard was a strong proponent of the acquisition of Belle Isle by the City of Detroit as a public park.

Bela Hubbard authored many scientific, literary, and historical papers, and in 1888 published a volume entitled "Memorials of a Half Century in Michigan and the Lake Regions".

Bela Hubbard died in 1896, and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Detroit.