Margaret De Motte Brown was a photographer best known for her documentation of historic Dutch houses in New Jersey and New York states. Her pictorial depictions of these historic structures form an integral part of the books Dutch Houses in the Hudson Valley Before 1776 (1929), by her friend Helen Wilkinson Reynolds; and Pre-Revolutionary Dutch Houses and Families in Northern New Jersey and Southern New York (1936) by Rosalie Fellows Bailey. Her work was commissioned by the Holland Society, which also commissioned the studies and eventual books by Reynolds and Bailey.
Margaret Brown frequently took photographs of Vassar College events, and a number of her pictures of the school, as well as nearby Dutchess County and sites, were published in The New York Times from the 1920s through 1940s. Brown exhibited her work both domestically and abroad from the 1910s through the 1930s.
From the guide to the Margaret Brown Dutch Houses Photograph Collection, [1920-1936], (@ 2011 New-York Historical Society)
