Sylvia Brown - Grappling with Legacy: Rhode Islands Brown Family and the American Philanthropic Impulse

GR A PPLING
WITH
LEGACY

Rhode Islands Brown Family and
the American Philanthropic Impulse

SYLVIA BROWN

Copyright 2017 Sylvia E. Brown.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-4417-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-4416-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-4418-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017905472

Print information available on the last page.

Archway Publishing rev. date: 10/31/2017

CONTENTS

In tribute to all the Nicholas Browns who came before me,

And with high hopes for those who will follow.

When a manuscript takes twelve years to research and write, the names of all those who have contributed along the way are inevitably too numerous to list. Since history was not my academic discipline, I would nevertheless like to recognize the historians who advised me with such generosity. Early on, I was fortunate to speak with the great author of popular history John Julius Norwich, who told me to read every secondary source and commentary, then make up my own mind. I have tried to follow this counsel, guided by accredited historians, notably Dr. D. K. Abbass, Dr. Patrick Conley, Dr. Robert Emlen, Dr. Caroline Frank, Dr. C. Morgan Grefe, Dr. David Kertzner, Dr. Albert Klyberg, Dr. Jane Lancaster, Dr. J. Stanley Lemons, Dr. Elyssa Tardiff, Kimberly Nusco, Dr. Edward Widmer, Dr. Gordon Wood, as well as fine amateur historians, including Henry Brown, Eric Doeschler, experienced authors, including Ellen Brown, and especially my husband, Andrew West, who also happens to be a wonderful copy editor. Any errors of fact and all opinions expressed are, of course, entirely my own.

The size and scope of the Brown family papers (housed at the John Carter Brown Library and the John Hay Library on Brown University campus, as well as at the Rhode Island Historical Society) are both a curse and blessing. It was only thanks to the detective work of my many researchers, notably Dr. Christopher Bickford and Dr. Elizabeth Cooke Stevens, that the manuscripts were found to support the points I sought to make. I was also fortunate that several family members shared with me letters and diaries, which are not as yet available to the public.

I am also grateful to all those who have assisted me with copy editing and proof-reading.

Finally, my years of research in Rhode Island would not have been possible without the hospitality of Ted and Amanda Fischer, as well as that of Garry and Angela Fischer.

June 3 rd , 1989

I looked up with a start as auctioneer Christopher Burge rapped his gavel on the podium. We now move effortlessly to lot one hundred, the President of Christies New York called out loudly, then paused to add with impeccable smoothness,... and I wonder why there are so many people in the room?

Burge continued: The magnificent Nicholas Brown Chippendale mahogany block-and-shell desk showing on the screen, and for so many months in the room next door. Lot 100.

Even the television crews at the back of the room fell silent.

Two millionanyone to start?

Within three minutes, the bidding climbed to $10,750,000. Only two paddles continued to rise. Then it hit eleven million. Burge leaned forward, gripping the front of the podium.

Silence. The hammer went down. Sold in front then. All done for eleven million. Eleven million.

I had just witnessed the sale of the most expensive piece of furniture in the world.

My fathers desk.

To many experts, it is the most majestic and spectacularly beautiful piece of furniture ever made in America, a nine-and-a-half-foot masterpiece from its scrolling Chinese ogee feet to the tip of its corkscrew flamed finials. One more inch, and it would have been a freak, commented the great American furniture collector Maxim Karolik. It was made in the 1760s from Cuban mahogany in the Townsend-Goddard workshop of Newport, Rhode Island. In this American colony where merchants were kings, such desk-bookcases evoked their complex lives and were considered the ultimate status symbol. A few remain today in museum collections. In 1989, my fathers desk was the last in private hands: the tallest, almost the narrowest, and certainly the most intricately carved of them all.

I did my homework at that desk.

Four years earlier, in 1985, after both my grandparents had died, our family home in Providence, Rhode Island, was discovered to be about to collapse from dry rot and termites. The 1792 Nightingale-Brown House is not only the largest eighteenth century wooden frame house still standing in the United States, but also one of its most graceful and harmonious Georgian-style buildings. My father, along with his brother and sister, felt strongly that this historic landmark should be saved and turned into a center for scholarship, one providing a congenial environment for visiting researchers. Since the family was unable to raise sufficient cash to restore the house, my father decided to sell his most valuable possession, the desk-bookcase which had come down to him through five generations.

It was valued for insurance purposes at $2 million, just about the initial estimate to renovate the house. So, in 1988, my father donated the desk to the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization, named after my grandfather. The Centers new director, Rob Emlen, was charged with selecting an auction house for the Americana sales the following May. But before he could finalize an agreement, Emlen was contacted by the pre-eminent New York antiques dealer, Harold Sack, who had a private client willing to pay $11 million for the desk.

Few could have resisted such an offer. That enormous sum was enough to restore the house, pay capital gains taxes, and still allow my father to keep some of the money for himself. No, he responded, I have given my word. If the desk is attracting this kind of interest, so much the better for the Center. One icon is saving the other. He also insisted that the auction should proceed. Christies won the mandate by offering $50,000 to have a copy made, and by endowing a lecture series at the Center.

Amazingly, when the hammer fell on June 3 rd , 1989, the high bid came from the same collector, Texas tycoon Robert Bass, who had instructed Sack to make the private offer. With the additional auction house commission, the desk finally cost him $12.1 million dollars. The under-bidder was Doris Duke, the tobacco heiress who had done so much to restore Newports colonial houses and build the collections of the Samuel Whitehorne House Museum. She had even requested a cardboard mock-up of the desk to ensure it would fit in that space. But she set herself a bid limit of $10.5 million; Harold Sacks budget was $18 million.

Six years later, in 1995, following a renovation which in the end cost over $9 million, my father presented the house, along with its furniture, family archives and an endowment, to Brown University.