Hubert T. Parson

Hubert Templeton Parson (September 18, 1872 – July 9, 1940) was an American businessman who served as president of the F. W. Woolworth Company.

Early life Parson was born on September 18, 1872, in Toronto, Ontario. He was a son of Eliza S. (née McGibben) Parson and Henry Edwin Parson, a former oil operator who made a fortune but lost it due to fires and the discovery of oil in Oil City, Pennsylvania. He had two brothers, Charles Parson (of Missoula, Montana) and Stuart Parson (of Bronxville, New York). Parson began working with the F. W. Woolworth Company as a $12 a week bookkeeper, obtaining that position through a 5-cent "want ad" when the Woolworth executive staff consisted of only four men. In 1905, he became treasurer,

Following the death of Frank W. Woolworth in 1919, Parson (who was always thought of by Woolworth as the son he never had) served as the second president of the company before retiring in 1932 (just before the company's 60-year age limit), responsible for the founding of over 2,000 stores.

Personal life In 1893, Parson was married to Maysie Adelaide Gasque (d. 1956). Maysie's brother, Clarence Warren Gasque was the director of Woolworth's in England. Parson walked Clarence's daughter, Maysie Gasque, down the aisle at her July 1930 wedding to Roland Robinson (later 1st Baron Martonmere) at St Margaret's Church, Westminster where Princess Mariza Chavchavadze was a bridesmaid. Maysie and Roland were the parents of Loretta Anne Robinson, who later married Edward S. Rogers Jr., the president and CEO of Rogers Communications Inc.

Parson died at New York Hospital in New York City on July 9, 1940. After a service at Fairchild Chapel, he was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. His widow, who was then living at 998 Fifth Avenue, died in May 1956.

Residences

The Parsons owned a house down the street from F.W Woolworth (who was at 990 Park Avenue) at 1071 Fifth Avenue in New York (today the site of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) and a large home at 72 Avenue Foch in Paris, which later was confiscated by the Nazis and became the base of operations for the Gestapo in Paris. At the time of his death, they were residing at 420 Park Avenue.

In 1918, Parson bought Shadow Lawn, a colonial, wood-frame structure mansion in West Long Branch, New Jersey (not far from the resort town of Asbury Park), In 1927, the home was destroyed by a fire and, in 1929, Parson built a new mansion which contained 130 rooms and cost a reported $10.5 million to build. The home was designed by Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer in the American Beaux-Arts style and built by Thompson-Starrett Company of New York, who built the Woolworth Building in New York City. The exterior gardens were by Achille Duchêne and the interior design was crafted by Julian Abele, one of the first professionally trained African American architects in the United States. Parson and his wife, along with her mother and sister (who worked in the New York office of Woolworth), all lived at Shadow Lawn.

In 1939, Parson, who was financially ruined by the Great Depression, lost Shadow Lawn to the town for nonpayment of $132,000 in taxes. The home later served as a military hospital and the site of a private school before Monmouth University acquired it in 1955 for $350,000.