Pioneer Information
Born in Boston, Browne attended the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts and then continued his architectural studies in Europe. Upon his return, he joined the firm of Jacques & Rantoul. In 1889, he partnered with Arthur Little and George A. Moore. The firm of Little & Browne was formed circa 1895 with Moore’s departure, 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. 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. He was also well-known as a watercolorist.
