Hobert Elliott Doyle (17 June 1889–18 December 1965), contractor, was the son of Charles Edward Doyle and Mary Josephine Elliott Doyle. About six months after he was born in Mount Carmel, Illinois, the family moved to Richmond, where his father worked for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company. Hobie Doyle, as he was known, attended McGuire's University School. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1909 and received a degree in civil engineering from Cornell University in 1912.

Doyle worked in Richmond as a clerk in 1913 before joining the George A. Fuller Company, of New York, as a field engineer during construction of the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. He continued to work for the Fuller Company, most notably on a new public library building in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1916 and 1917. After the United States entered World War I, Doyle resigned in order to attend officers' training camp in Jacksonville, Florida, and earned the rank of second lieutenant. While stationed at the port of embarkation at Newport News, he most likely supervised engineering projects. After his discharge in 1919, Doyle returned to Richmond, where he worked for a construction company before establishing his own business in 1925 with John Walden Russell.

The Doyle and Russell Contracting Company's first major project was the Central National Bank building, at twenty-one stories often considered Richmond's first skyscraper. Completed in June 1930, the art deco building also housed the offices of Doyle and Russell. That same year the firm joined the long-delayed project to construct the Virginia War Memorial Carillon. Doyle and Russell completed the Georgian Revival–style tower, located in Richmond's Byrd Park, in September 1932.

During the Great Depression the company received contracts for state buildings partially funded by the Public Works Administration. In July 1934 it began construction work on the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which opened to the public on 17 January 1936. The firm acquired the Virginia State Library contract in June 1939. The new library building, designed in a modern style that adhered to a typical PWA aesthetic, was officially dedicated on 16 October 1941 and also housed the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and the office of the state attorney general.

Doyle and Russell received a number of federal construction contracts during World War II, including buildings at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, at Quantico in Virginia, and at the naval operating base in Norfolk. In September 1941 the firm won 20 percent of a joint contract for the new War Department building in Arlington County. Later named the Pentagon, the structure was finished in just eighteen months, although the original construction estimate of $35 million among the three contractors had almost doubled by its completion in January 1943. In 1942 Doyle and Russell received a joint Army-Navy Production Award for its excellent work.

During the next two decades Doyle and Russell constructed numerous buildings across the state and along the East Coast. Its most notable commissions included the Richmond headquarters of the Seaboard Air Line Railway (1958). Retaining its government connections, the company's Norfolk branch office received a contract in 1959 from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to build two launch pads at Wallops Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore. Doyle continued as chairman of the board after Russell's death in 1960, and the company operated under the Doyle and Russell name until 1973, when the George Hyman Construction Company acquired it.

On 17 August 1946, in Washington, D.C., Doyle married Alice Lewis Botts, who had at least one son and one daughter from a previous marriage. They had no children. A strong supporter of the Virginia Military Institute, in 1948 Doyle founded the Sportsmen's Club (renamed the Keydet Club in 1971), an alumni group that raised funds for VMI's athletic scholarships, and served as its president until 1953. He served on the alumni association's executive committee from 1941 to 1951, as vice president from 1951 to 1953, and as president from 1953 to 1955. To reward his dedication, the Sportsmen's Club declared a Hobie Doyle Day in the spring of 1961. He received VMI's Diploma of Distinguished Merit in 1962.

Hobert Elliott Doyle died on 18 December 1965 and was buried in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery. The H. E. "Hobie" Doyle memorial scholarship, awarded to a distinguished VMI athlete, was established the following year, and in November 1972 VMI's Sports Hall of Fame inducted him. At his widow's death on 8 April 1974, more than $300,000 from his estate went to the VMI Alumni Association, enhanced the Keydet Club's Doyle scholarship, and aided the VMI Foundation, Inc. In 1977 the college's board of visitors established the Hobert E. Doyle '09 Award, conferred annually on the alumni chapter that raised the most money for the Keydet Club.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Lyon Gardiner Tyler, ed., Men of Mark in Virginia (1906–1909), 1:105–107 (portrait on 104), and National Cyclopædia of American Biography (1891–1984), 52:454; self-reported birth date in World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards (1917–1918), Record Group 163, and World War II Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards (1942), Record Group 147, both National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; marriage in Richmond News Leader, 17 Aug. 1946; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 18 Aug. 1946; Virginia Military Institute Alumni Review 25 (fall 1948): 6, ibid. 30 (fall 1953): 10, ibid. 51 (fall 1974): 67, and ibid. 53 (spring 1977): 52; obituaries in Richmond Times-Dispatch, 19 Dec. 1965, Richmond News Leader, 20 Dec. 1965, and Virginia Military Institute Alumni Review 43 (winter 1966): 11.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Sarah E. Rhodes.

How to cite this page:
Sarah E. Rhodes,"Hobert Elliott Doyle (1889–1965)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2015 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Doyle_Hobert_Elliott, accessed [today's date]).

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