He was a familiar figure in Washington, and well known among the public men of his day.

A versatile and entertaining companion, by turns prosperous and impecunious, and an optimist always, Gardiner Hubbard became a really indispensable factor as the first advance agent of the telephone business.
No other citizen had done more for the city of Cambridge than Hubbard.
It was he who secured gas for Cambridge in 1853, and pure water, and a street-railway to Boston.

He had gone through the South in 1860 in the patriotic hope that he might avert the impending Civil War.

He had induced the legislature to establish the first public school for deaf-mutes, the school that drew Bell to Boston in 1871.

And he had been for years a most restless agitator for improvements in telegraphy and the post office.