Brown went to Paris and graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts in 1901, attending the atelier of Victor Laloux, before returning to San Francisco to establish his practice with Bakewell in 1905.

Brown was meticulously trained in the rigorous Beaux-Arts tradition, and in the City Hall project his attention extended to the smallest details of light fixtures, floor patterning and doorknobs.

In addition to their well-known monumental works, Bakewell and Brown designed several homes in the Arts and Crafts style championed by Maybeck.

[2][3] They later designed additions to Ernest Coxhead's 1893 Beta Theta Pi house they had lived in as undergraduates, now a listed Berkeley landmark.

[4] The firm went on to design a series of familiar San Francisco landmarks, and many buildings at Stanford University, before Brown dissolved the partnership in 1927.