Background
Herbert Wheildon Cotton Browne was born on November 22, 1860 in Boston, Massachussets, the son of Thomas Quincy Browne, a merchant, and Juliet Frances (Wheildon) Browne.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Herbert Wheildon Cotton Browne
Edit ProfileEducation
Educated at Noble's Classical School, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Herbert Browne traveled extensively in Europe, studying painting in Paris and, in 1883, with Fabio Fabii in Florence.
Career
After working as a student (1888 - 1890) in the Boston architectural office of Andrews and Jacques, Herbert Browne joined Arthur Little of Salem, Massachussets, in establishing the Boston firm of Little and Browne. Little was one of the early exponents of the "colonial revival" in American architecture.
Little and Browne specialized in large and elegant city and country houses. Like Richard Morris Hunt, Charles F. McKim, Stanford White, and Ogden Codman, who was a close friend of Browne's, they created great houses that were sometimes more tasteful than their owners. Early in this century, the house was encased in red brick, and a third story and large wings were added. In one of the wings was a ballroom with mirrors designed to enhance a set of French tapestries and four colossal marble columns that Browne had found in Italy; at one end a lower circular Empire room with painted paneling, brought by him from Mantua, served as an anteroom to the garden.
Although Faulkner Farm was a complete and handsome house in its first stage, it had clearly been planned with the subsequent enlargement in mind.
His ideas involved a subtle and tasteful collaboration between architect and client, both of whom enjoyed working with fine materials to create a European setting.
About 1900 Browne designed Mrs. Wirt Dexter's house in Chicago and later a house for her on Commonwealth Ave. in Boston. He designed a Washington house for Senator Stephen B. Elkins of West Virginia, a country house in Hamilton, Massachussets, for Ambassador George von L. Meyer, and many houses in Boston.
In later years it saddened him that, after the deaths of the friends for whom he had designed them, some of his houses were demolished because of their scale. That was the case with Weld, the Brookline country house of Mr. and Mrs. Larz Anderson, which was near Faulkner Farm.
The Washington house that he built for the Andersons at 2118 Massachusetts Ave. , N. W. , in 1902-1904 has survived as the headquarters of the Society of the Cincinnati.
After the society in 1916 acquired the 1795 house built by Charles Bulfinch for Harrison Gray Otis at the corner of Cambridge and Lynde Streets in Boston, Browne restored and remodeled the building.
Following the death of Arthur Little in 1925, Browne continued the practice under the firm's name in partnership with Lester Couch. On Couch's death in 1939, Browne retired and the firm came to an end. Browne's apartment at 66 Beacon Street was crowded with the Italian furniture, marbles, and medallions that he loved. It was cared for by Francesco Benfante, a manservant whom he had brought from Italy early in the century, who for decades came daily from his home in Somerville to look after his master.
When he died in his eighty-sixth year, he bequeathed his collection of early architectural books to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.
He was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachussets. A memorial exhibition of his watercolors was held in 1948 at the Boston Athenaeum, of which he had been a proprietor since 1903.
Achievements
-
The real boost in the Herbert Browne's career began since his partnership with the firm of Little & Browne, which was formed circa 1895, and Browne continued to practice under the firm's name with Lester Couch until 1939, after Little's death in 1925. The firm was noted for its Beaux-Arts townhouses and country estates designed for wealthy and socially-prominent patrons in Massachusetts, New York, and Washington, D. C. , such as the Larz Anderson House and Henry Clay Frick's Eagle Rock. Little's interest in Colonial Revival design led to the renovation of the Jonathan Hamilton House in 1898, where Browne created a Colonial Revival garden and became interested in landscape architecture, subsequently designing formal gardens at the Bayard Thayer Mansion in Lancaster, Massachusetts, and at North Wales Farm in Warrenton, Virginia.
Politics
A devout Anglo-Catholic, Browne was from 1926 a member of the corporation of the Church of the Advent.
Views
Browne had a deep feeling for the New England past, as well as a strong affection for Italian architecture of the baroque and Empire periods and for Italy and its people. He thought grandly in terms of marbles, bas-reliefs, busts, statues, and bronze ornaments.
His flair for elegance would have endeared him to Italian grand dukes or German princes of an earlier period. He worked closely with his clients, who were also his friends, to provide handsome settings for their lives. One such example is Faulkner Farm, a house on a hillside in Brookline, Massachussets, which he designed early in his career for Mrs. Charles F. Sprague (later Mrs. Edward D. Brandegee), and which is now the home of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In its first form, it was a rectangular, two-story, frame structure, clapboarded and painted white, which stood in large Italianate gardens designed by Charles A. Platt.
Membership
A Fellow on the American Institute of Architects, Browne was also a member of the Board of Trustees for the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, now known as Historic New England.
Personality
A sociable bachelor, Browne wore a small beard, had many friends, and was in great demand in Boston as a dinner companion.
Interests
Connections
- Father:
- Thomas Quincy Browne
- Mother:
- Juliet Frances (Wheildon) Browne
- Partner:
- Arthur Little
- Partner:
- George A. Moore
- Partner:
- Lester Couch
- Friend:
- Charles F. McKim
- Friend:
- Richard Morris Hunt
- Friend:
- Stanford White
- Friend:
- Ogden Codman
merchant
In 1889, he partnered with Arthur Little and George A. Moore.
architect
References
-
Born
-
Died
April 29, 1946 (aged 86) -
Nationality
American -
Religion
Anglo-Catholic