Brown Land Company

The Brown Land Company, incorporated June 6, 1903, under Chapter 176 of the General Laws of Rhode Island. Its incorporators included the three trustees of the Estate of John Carter Brown: Sophia Augusta Brown (1825-1909), widow of John Carter Brown; Moses B. I. Goddard (1831-1907), partner of Brown & Ives; George W. R. Matteson (1833-1908); and Frank W. Matteson (1869-1933), family trustees. The principal corporate objectives and purposes as set forth in its charter were to engage in the business of purchasing, acquiring, taking, holding, managing, improving, leasing, mortgaging and selling real estate. Upon its incorporation, the company's total authorized capital stock was $300,000 with the Estate of John Carter Brown providing the total amount and owning all shares.

At the first stockholder's meeting on June 29, 1903, incorporators voted to purchase from the trustees of the Estate of John Carter Brown all commercial and unimproved property owned by the estate. Principally located in Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota, these lands provided significant income. Officers of the company proceeded to register as a foreign corporation in the above states, a necessary step to comply with contemporary Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota laws regarding use and sale of property.

As a foreign corporation, the Brown Land Company complied with increasingly restrictive laws passed by Midwestern legislatures regulating speculative investment by absentee landlords. A generation earlier, many wealthy capitalists from the east, including John Carter Brown, rushed to purchase treaty allotment lands. Previous state legislatures generously gave Native Americans as well as veterans of the War of 1812 and the War with Mexico (1846-48) land in an effort to promote settlement. Instead of settling the lands, however, many of the recipients of the treaty allotment lands sold their tracts for a handsome profit to professional land agents such as Winthrop S. Gilman. Gilman and his colleagues scouted the area and purchased allotment lands for wealthy clients looking for property suitable for profitable rental or resale. The peak years of land speculation in the Plains states were 1854-1858, but giving free land to select individuals continued until 1873. At that time, the interior states abandoned this practice due to numerous complaints by local landowners of price gouging by non-resident property owners eager for profits. The rapid growth of the interior states coupled with the favorable financial return on farm mortgages and land sales during the nineteenth century made this investment a vital source of capital during John Carter Brown's lifetime.

As a real estate holding company, the Brown Land Company could engage in the sale of land as well as the improvement of existing property. However, throughout the first years of the company's existence, sales outpaced improvements. Property sold from 1903-1909 included the Horst estate in St. Paul; 160 acres in Cuming County, Nebraska; the Reeve estate, 408-410 Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis; vacant lots in Des Moines; lots in Ely's addition in St. Paul; 160 acres in Lyon County, Iowa; the Loring estate and the Van Strum estate, Minneapolis; and the Gilman Block, Sioux City.

The death of incorporator Sophia Augusta Brown in 1909 precipitated an equal division of her three thousand shares of the Brown Land Company between her daughter, Sophia Augusta Sherman (1867-1947), and her grandson, John Nicholas Brown (1900-1979). Until Mr. Brown's twenty-first birthday, his mother and legal guardian, Natalie Bayard Brown (1869-1950), acted as his guardian and maintained an active interest in all financial matters pertaining to her son's inheritance. Mrs. Sherman preferred to rely on her husband, a New York banker, to manage her myriad trust funds. After Mr. Sherman's death in 1912, however, she increasingly took particular care to become knowledgeable about her investments.

The sale and lease of western lands proved as profitable as the incorporators hoped. Within a few years, cash assets grew to the point that it became possible to invest capital in substantial way. The dynamic economy in Rhode Island during the nineteenth century caused the Browns and their family and business associates, the Goddards, to invest in Providence real estate. In 1911, stockholders authorized the purchase of the Turks Head estate and the Old National Bank estate (known locally as the Whitman Block), junction of Westminster and Weybosset Streets, Providence, Rhode Island. The property cost the company $485,567.24 and Howells and Stokes, a New York architectural firm, won the bid to replace the historic Whitman Block with a modern sixteen-story commercial building. The City of Providence purchased 556 square feet of the Turks Head estate for $15,000 for street-widening before the company began construction of the new building.

The Turks Head Building, 7-17 Weybossett Street, in the heart of the downtown Providence financial district, was designed by Howells and Stokes with interior planning by the firm of Jackson, Robertson & Adams. Built by Thompson-Starrett Company, the Turks Head Building was the first office space constructed in the city meeting the requirements of a newly-passed local building ordinance requiring absolutely fire-proof buildings. Its distinguishing feature other than its unique site is the high-relief sculpture of a Turk's head in the frieze above the third story. Local custom cites Jacob Whitman, an early owner of the property, as originating the name for this intersection by placing a ship's figurehead of a Turk on his front porch.

The acquisition, cost and maintenance of the Turks Head Building quickly outstripped the capital of Brown Land Company, and by 1917, stockholders voted to raise the amount of capital stock to $2,000,000. To meet the rising fixed costs of owning a commercial site in Rhode Island, the company sold Iowa and Nebraska lands at a brisk rate. Much of the proceeds from these land sales went into making improvements on the rapidly obsolete physical plant to meet the competitive needs of the marketplace. Fortunately, the prosperity and inflation of the 1920s helped to ensure fully occupied office space in the downtown Providence.

In 1924, Sophia Augusta Sherman turned over her shares in the company to her daughters, Mildred Camoys (1888-1961) and Irene Gillespie (1887-1972). Each was given five thousand shares and they, along with John Nicholas Brown with his ten thousand shares, benefited from prosperous times. Mrs. Sherman changed her mind a year later, however, and her trustees reclaimed her ten thousand shares. Once again, she and her nephew shared ownership of numerous properties, which now included lots in Palisades, New York, purchased from the Estate of John Carter Brown in 1925.

Palisades, New York, located in Rockland County, was a sparsely populated rural town when the Estate of John Carter Brown first purchased lots in that area in the 1880s. Title passed jointly to Sophia Augusta Brown and John Nicholas Brown, Minor, in 1913 and when Mr. Brown took final control of his inherited properties at the age of 25, he and his aunt sold the Palisades lots to the Brown Land Company. The Palisades lots were managed by Gilman, Son & Co., a New York-based company founded by Winthrop S. Gilman, the professional land agent who purchased large quantities of western lands for John Carter Brown in the nineteenth century. Mr. Gilman was a resident of Palisades, New York, and he and his son, Theodore, provided an intimate view of the town and its development to Brown Land Company stockholders until the lots' eventual sale in 1929.

Brown Land Company depended on its agents to oversee and care for property, collect rents, negotiate for leases, pay taxes and provide legal and political guidance to optimize profitability. At its incorporation, Daniel T. Gilman of Sioux City, Iowa, represented the company in Iowa and Minnesota Loan & Trust bore responsibility for Minnesota properties. Upon the death of Daniel T. Gilman in 1909, W. Stewart Gilman took over in Iowa and William B. Meikle traveled around Nebraska for the company until replaced by the Bank of Dixon County in 1925. W. S. & H. K. Gilman took responsibility for Iowa properties in 1923 and for Nebraska properties in 1932. Gilman, Son & Co. managed the Palisades property during the entire time the lots were owned by Brown Land Company. The Depression years strained relationships between the agents and the company due to the difficulties in collecting rents, and aggressive replacements were sought. In 1938, Daniel C. Bell took charge of the Minnesota lands, the C. T. Corporation System took over in Nebraska and the company hired George Cosson and the Gilmans as its representative in Iowa. A further refinement of agent changes came in 1939 when Byron Reed Company replaced W. S. & H.K. Gilman in Iowa. This move ended a long and profitable relationship between the Gilman family and the Brown family which extended back to the initial western land investments by John Carter Brown in the nineteenth century.

The economic downturn of the 1930s proved a difficult time for the Brown Land Company. High taxes and reduced or non-existent rental payments in both commercial and farm investments strained the company's resources. The company loaned $10,000 to W. S. Gilman in 1932 to organize the Gilman Agricultural Credit Corporation, which was to provide loans to tenants residing on company-owned lands in need of such support. Originally started to provide tenant farmers with the same type of financial help given to agricultural landowners in the New Deal programs as the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the Farm Credit Act, the Credit Corporation ceased to exist when the federal government expanded agricultural programs to include tenant farmers in 1934.

The Depression era difficulties collecting rent and mortgage payments which cast a shadow over profits from the farm lands were duplicated at the Turks Head Building. Occupants of the sixteen floors struggled to pay rents negotiated during the heady days before the stock market crash of 1929. While Brown Land Company was sympathetic to economic hardships, fixed expenses, increased maintenance costs and skyrocketing federal and state income taxes reduced the profitability of this investment. The 1940s ushered in a demand by occupants for up-to-date commercial space. The capital improvements needed to modernize the Turks Head Building proved too costly for the Brown Land Company to consider. In addition, building employees sought to unionize in an effort to gain higher wages. These developments strained the resources of the company and led to the decision to sell this property to Arnold W. Jones & Company in 1944 for $627,000.

In 1941, the company sold one of its most lucrative income-producing properties, the Newspaper Row estate, corner of Fourth and Minnesota Streets, St. Paul. Rented by The Dispatch Printing Company since 1895 when it was the property of the Estate of John Carter Brown, the four-story brick building designed by J. W. Stevens housed the St. Paul Dispatch in a specially constructed building with a three-story press on the premises. When the Dispatch consolidated with the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1909, the so-called Dispatch Building was open around the clock producing morning, evening and weekend editions for St. Paul readers. In 1920, the Dispatch Printing Company renewed its lease for twenty-five years but technological advances and a rising circulation base caused the newspaper to seek larger quarters as economic conditions improved in the late 1930s. Because the Brown Land Company could not provide the space requirements or extensive improvements needed to bring the newspaper into the modern age, the printing company chose to plan its own building and locate it elsewhere in St. Paul. The unique construction of Newspaper Row limited future rentals and fearing a vacant building on which to pay high taxes, stockholders voted to demolish the outdated structure and lease the property for a parking lot.

Throughout the active years of the Brown Land Company, many members of the Brown and Goddard families participated in administrative decisions along with trustees George W. R. Matteson and his son, Frank. Moses B. I. Goddard, incorporator, was elected president in 1903 and held this office until his death in 1907. William Watts Sherman, husband of Sophia Augusta Sherman, assumed the position until 1911 when failing health prevented his active participation. Immediately following Mr. Sherman's resignation, Colonel Robert H. I. Goddard (1837-1916) took over as president, and at Colonel Goddard's death, his son, R. H. Ives Goddard (1888-1959), succeeded him and held the office until 1945. John Nicholas Brown, treasurer of the company since 1934, became president after he assumed sole ownership of the company in 1945.

The company continued to buy and sell small amounts of western lands during the war years, but the loss of its two largest profit makers hindered expansion. It remained for Mr. Brown to dissolve the Brown Land Company with the 1946 sale of the parking lot on the site of Newspaper Row and final dissolution and distribution of assets in 1947. The name, Brown Land Company, resurfaced in the 1970s when the Brown family members wished to form a real estate holding company at that time.