Background
Herbert was born in 1860 in Boston, United States.
Herbert was born in 1860 in Boston, United States.
After attending classes at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts the young man traveled extensively abroad and pursued his architectural studies in Paris and at Florence, Italy.
Returning to Boston Mr. Browne joined the office of Jacques and Rantoul for a period of practical training, at the conclusion of which in 1895. He formed a partnership with Arthur Little and the late George A. Moore. After a few years in that association, Mr. Moore withdrew and the firm became Little and Browne, known for many succeeding years as one of the leading architectural offices in Boston.
During his practice, Mr. Browne acquired a clientele comprising many socially prominent persons for whom he designed fine homes. Among the most important was a residence in Washington for the Hon. Stephen D. Elkins, former U. S. Senator from Virginia; Mrs. Wirt Dexter’s house in Chicago (c. 1900) and later a Commonwealth Avenue residence in Boston, the E. W. Bliss house in New York; "Faulkner Farm" an estate in Brookline, Mass., for Mrs. Edward Brandegee, widow of the late Senator Sprague; residence of George von L. Meyer, former Ambassador to Italy, built at Hamilton, Mass., and also a number of dignified homes in Boston for other clients. In addition to these was the Washington residence of the late Larz Anderson at Massachusetts Avenue, the firm's outstanding achievement in domestic architecture designed in Italianate style. Mr. Browne was particularly identified with the planning of that house, the erection of which covered a period of two years, 1902 to 1904, and was supervised by the firm. In recent years it was deeded by Mr. Anderson’s widow to the Order of the Cincinnati.
One of the late works of the firm in which Mr. Browne took a personal interest was the remodeling of the old Harrison Gray Otis House in Boston at the corner of Lynde and Cambridge Streets, for the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. Following the death of Arthur Little in 1925, Mr. Browne continued to practice under the firm name in association with Lester Couch until the latter's demise in 1939. Throughout his remaining years, he was active until a few years before his death at the age of eighty-six.