Albert Lowry Webster

As a constant frequenter of the Club house and an exceedingly useful member of the Board of Management and the House committee, Albert Lowry Webster brought with his genial personality an unusual professional reputation. The career as sanitary engineer, into which he plunged at once and successfully after leaving college in 1879, covers a striking variety of achievement. The man who, beginning as Assistant Topographer of the United States Geological Survey, had successively directed the sewage plant and waterworks at Frankfort-on-the-Main [sic: Frankfurt], constructed the famous water tower at Warsaw, served as sanitary engineer for the New York City Department of Public Works, as expert on the Tenement House Commission, as consulting engineer on water main and sewage for the Riverside Drive extension for a dozen great city buildings, had lived out a full history. But nobody who exchanged views with Webster at the Century would have suspected it, for Webster never talked shop. In his Club-house conversation the Club’s own affairs always had first place; the news of the day came next, although on a level of much diminished interest; his own achievement followed last of all.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1931 Century Association Yearbook