Photograph of Secretary Desk (July 2016)
Title
Photograph of Secretary Desk (July 2016)
Description
With its distinctive carving, master craftsmanship, and incredible rarity as the last extant Newport secretary desks still in private ownership, the Nicholas Brown secretary desk made headlines when it was auctioned in 1989 for $12.1 million—the highest price a piece of American furniture had ever fetched at auction.
The desk is one of eleven known secretary desks constructed by Rhode Island cabinetmakers, most of them by the famed Goddard-Townsend families of Newport. Only ten of these incredibly valuable desks survive to this day.
The four Brown brothers of colonial Providence, John, Joseph, Moses, and Nicholas Brown, prominent merchants, each owned their own secretary desk. After Nicholas’s death, his desk passed to his son, Nicholas Brown II, the namesake of Brown University. In 1814, Nicholas Brown II purchased 357 Benefit from the Nightingales. From then until its sale in 1989, Nicholas Brown’s secretary desk passed from father to son along with the house itself.
As one of the most beautiful and elaborate pieces of furniture in the house, the desk would have been the perfect formal parlor piece. A secretary desk is a sophisticated design form in which a lower set of drawers topped by a flat writing surface is crowned by an upper bookcase. It was then—and still is now—an incredibly impressive achievement of craftsmanship. This solid mahogany secretary features an upper bookcase that the maker thoughtfully crafted into three distinct doors to form a clean-cut continuous line with the lower three drawers, hinging together the two upper right into one unit for ease of use. With its block front capped by six carved seashells and “C” scroll ogee bracket feet, the secretary is distinctly Newport in design.
Rare, incredibly intricate, and in remarkable condition, the secretary desk was the subject of many collectors’ desires when it was brought to auction at Christie’s Auction House. Proceeds from the $12.1 million sale went into saving and restoring the home where Nicholas Brown’s secretary desk stood for so long. The Nightingale-Brown House, then suffering from water and termite damage to its wood-frame, was saved and restored to its mid-1900s appearance with funds from the sale, and the remaining proceeds endowed Brown University’s John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, which occupies the house today.
In the place of this historic desk now stands an exact replica: a reproduction of the secretary desk crafted by cabinetmaker Alan Breed. It took Breed over four months to replicate the fine craftsmanship of the original secretary. Breed’s reproduction now stands in the very same spot that Nicholas Brown’s secretary occupied for most of one hundred and fifty years.
The desk is one of eleven known secretary desks constructed by Rhode Island cabinetmakers, most of them by the famed Goddard-Townsend families of Newport. Only ten of these incredibly valuable desks survive to this day.
The four Brown brothers of colonial Providence, John, Joseph, Moses, and Nicholas Brown, prominent merchants, each owned their own secretary desk. After Nicholas’s death, his desk passed to his son, Nicholas Brown II, the namesake of Brown University. In 1814, Nicholas Brown II purchased 357 Benefit from the Nightingales. From then until its sale in 1989, Nicholas Brown’s secretary desk passed from father to son along with the house itself.
As one of the most beautiful and elaborate pieces of furniture in the house, the desk would have been the perfect formal parlor piece. A secretary desk is a sophisticated design form in which a lower set of drawers topped by a flat writing surface is crowned by an upper bookcase. It was then—and still is now—an incredibly impressive achievement of craftsmanship. This solid mahogany secretary features an upper bookcase that the maker thoughtfully crafted into three distinct doors to form a clean-cut continuous line with the lower three drawers, hinging together the two upper right into one unit for ease of use. With its block front capped by six carved seashells and “C” scroll ogee bracket feet, the secretary is distinctly Newport in design.
Rare, incredibly intricate, and in remarkable condition, the secretary desk was the subject of many collectors’ desires when it was brought to auction at Christie’s Auction House. Proceeds from the $12.1 million sale went into saving and restoring the home where Nicholas Brown’s secretary desk stood for so long. The Nightingale-Brown House, then suffering from water and termite damage to its wood-frame, was saved and restored to its mid-1900s appearance with funds from the sale, and the remaining proceeds endowed Brown University’s John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, which occupies the house today.
In the place of this historic desk now stands an exact replica: a reproduction of the secretary desk crafted by cabinetmaker Alan Breed. It took Breed over four months to replicate the fine craftsmanship of the original secretary. Breed’s reproduction now stands in the very same spot that Nicholas Brown’s secretary occupied for most of one hundred and fifty years.
Creator
Banks III, Jesse
Source
Digital copy created by the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage
Date
2016-07-28
Contributor
Jennifer Shook
Rights
Rights Status Not Evaluated
Citation
Banks III, Jesse, “Photograph of Secretary Desk (July 2016),” Digital Tours of The Nightingale-Brown House , accessed November 2, 2025, https://cds.library.brown.edu/NBHouse/items/show/68.