Arthur Brown, Jr. (1874-1957) was an American architect, based in San Francisco, known for his Beaux-ArtsSan Francisco City Hall (opened 1915, illustration, below right) and the city's Opera House, as well as the poured-concrete Art ModerneCoit Tower (1932), that crowns Telegraph Hill. Brown was meticulously trained, and in the City Hall project his attention extended to the smallest details of light fixures, floor patterning and doorknobs.
City Hall, 1915
Most of his best-known San Francisco works were collaborations with engineers: City Hall; the Pacific Gas and Electric building at Market and Beale; the War Memorial Opera House and War Memorial Veterans Building; Coit Tower (with Henry Howard); and the Transbay Transit Terminal. At the Opera House he commissioned the auditorium's interior from the noted theater designer G. Albert Lansburgh, who designed some fifty theaters for the Orpheum Circuit. Lansburgh's success at San Francisco won the praise of soprano Lily Pons who claimed "the house sings back to me".
Brown's Coit Tower was the site of some of the first public works murals executed under the WPA. "The primitive nature of Coit Tower would lend itself better to that sort of thing better than other public buildings," was Arthur Brown's first reaction to the project. Diego Ribera included Brown among the designers and craftsmen in his fresco mural of The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City (1931) at the San Francisco Art Institute, which Brown had designed (see link).
In Washington, D. C. Brown designed a group of three buildings (the Interstate Commerce Commission Building, its near twin the Customs Department building (which lacks ceremonial interior spaces) and a departmental auditorium) that form part of the larger building group, the Federal Triangle, which was the largest construction project undertaken by the US Federal government, before the building of the Pentagon. Preliminary designs were begun in 1926 and construction occupied the Depression years between 1932 and 1934.
The new buildings were to be designed to reflect the "dignity and power of the nation" according to the brief, and the resulting conservative blend of classicism with a timid modernism shares qualities with contemporary work by Albert Speer and the architects working for Mussolini.
External links
Diego Ribera's mural at the SFAI (http://www.sfai.edu/dr.htm)
Brown is best known, however, for the magnificent Ferry Building, designed in late 1892, and finally completed in mid-1898 after a $1 million construction project.
A lot of Brown's residential work in San Francisco was lost in the 1906 fire, such as the beautiful Alban Towne house at 1101 California, although its portico was saved and now stands by Lloyd's Lake in Golden Gate Park as a memorial known today as The Portals of the Past.
Brown tragically died at the young age of 36, in January 1896, three months after a runaway horse and buggy accident near his Burlingame home left him with broken bones and internal injuries.
Brown is best known, however, for the magnificent Ferry Building, designed in late 1892, and finally completed in mid-1898 after a $1 million construction project.
A lot of Brown's residential work in San Francisco was lost in the 1906 fire, such as the beautiful Alban Towne house at 1101 California, although its portico was saved and now stands by Lloyd's Lake in Golden Gate Park as a memorial known today as The Portals of the Past.
Brown tragically died at the young age of 36, in January 1896, three months after a runaway horse and buggy accident near his Burlingame home left him with broken bones and internal injuries.
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