R. H. Hunt

Reuben Harrison Hunt (February 2, 1862 – May 28, 1937), also known as R. H. Hunt, was an American architect who spent most of his life in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He is considered to have been one of the city's most significant early architects. He also designed major public building projects in other states. He was a principal of the R.H. Hunt and Co. firm.

Hunt moved to Chattanooga in 1882 and was employed as a carpenter by Adams Brothers. By 1886, he had learned to read plans and organize projects for them and was doing the work of an architect. That year he and L. W. McDaniel formed an architectural firm. In 1890, he started a new firm with E. N. Lamm. Two years later, he opened his own firm.

Although he would eventually design and build many different kinds of buildings, Hunt, a devout Baptist, marketed and positioned his firm as primarily a builder of churches of any size. Customers could choose from three books of church building plans, and Hunt routinely reused these making changes mostly to brick, detail work, and the arrangement of buildings on the site. With this system, he was able to build churches throughout the South. This included well-known Chattanooga churches such as Second Presbyterian Church and First Baptist Church, as well as the Tabernacle in Atlanta.

In 1907, Hunt's firm opened a satellite office in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1919, they opened an second satellite office in the Southwestern Life Building in Dallas, Texas. The Dallas office oversaw all projects west of the Mississippi River.

Hunt designed a number of Chattanooga's homes and public buildings, including the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Auditorium (1924), the Joel W. Solomon Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse (1934) with Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, the Hamilton County, Tennessee Courthouse (1912), the James (1907) and Maclellan (1924) buildings, the Carnegie Library (1905) and the St. John's Hotel (1915).

The U.S. Post Office and Courthouse in Chattanooga, Tennessee, built 1932–1933, was Hunt's last major work. Hunt designed every major public building constructed in Chattanooga between 1895 and 1935. He was also the architect of local churches, hospitals, and private office buildings, as well as similar public and private buildings throughout the South. In 1938 the Chattanooga building was recognized by the American Institute of Architects as one of the 150 finest buildings constructed in the previous twenty years in the United States, and it was featured in an AIA photographic exhibit in America and Europe. Numerous works by Hunt are preserved and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, 21 of which are covered in one 1979 survey study.