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Arthur Page Brown, Society Architect
The architect of the extraordinary “warehouse” was the socially
prominent Arthur Page Brown, who was born in New York in 1859. After
attending Cornell University, he joined the prestigious firm of McKim,
Mead and White where he worked as a draftsman. After a study trip to
Europe, he returned to New York and opened his own firm. Will Crocker’s
aunt, Mary Ann Deming Crocker, brought Brown to the Bay Area in
1889 to design a mausoleum for her husband, Charles, who had died the
previous year. Charles Crocker had been seriously injured in a carriage
accident that took place in New York City in 1886. His death two years
later was blamed on his injuries, from which he had never fully recovered.
Brown’s memorial to the late president of the Central Pacific Railroad still
stands in Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery. Its base of rustic cut stone
hints at the style of the huge packing house that he would build just three
years later in Montecito.
The Crocker-Sperry packing house is distinguished by a large stone set over
the central arch facing the ocean, carved with the date 1892. Rustic stone-
and-arch design seems to have been a leitmotif of Brown’s work that year, as
it was also when he created the double-arched, rustic stone bridge that
spans Stow Lake in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Additionally in
1892, Arthur Page Brown started planning one of his last and most
lasting creations, the Ferry Building in San Francisco. It, too, features
a long facade graced with regularly spaced and rounded arches. Both
buildings were noted survivors of major earthquakes—San Francisco’s
in 1906, Santa Barbara’s in 1925.
Brown’s collaboration with Will Crocker continued when he designed
five mansion-sized “cottages” in Hillsborough in 1892-93. Ironically,
The finished clubhouse shows the extensions on the east and west sides that greatly
expanded the capacity of the original packing house, as designed by the architectural
firm of Warner, Morris & Wilson (photo courtesy of Birnam Wood Golf Club).
Several of the Birnam Wood Golf Club creators pose in front of the newly
completed clubhouse (from left): Charles Wilson, architect; J.W. (Jim) Bailey,
contractor; W.W. “Pete” Sears; unidentified; unidentified; Barney Prowell;
unidentified (photo courtesy of J.W. Bailey).