John Nicholas Brown II (February 21, 1900 – October 10, 1979) was the United States Assistant Secretary of the Navy (AIR) from 1946 to 1949.

He was born in New York City on February 21, 1900, to John Nicholas Brown I (1861–1900), who died on May 1 of the same year, and Natalie Bayard Dresser (1869–1950), daughter of Civil War Veteran and civil engineer Brevet Major George Warren Dresser and Elizabeth Stuyvesant LeRoy.

Brown served briefly in the United States Navy during the closing days of the First World War as a seaman.

[6] In the wake of the Wall Street crash of 1929, Brown took control of his family's real estate and textiles businesses, beginning new enterprises and streamlining others.

Near the end of World War II, Brown was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel and worked for the United States Army in Europe as Special Cultural Advisor for the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (MFAA) as well as Chief of Monuments of the U.S. Group Control Council.

After the war, he helped supervise the return of art treasures stolen by the Nazis to their rightful owners.

One of Brown's first acts of philanthropy was in 1924 to finance the construction of the large and ornate chapel at St. George's School in Middletown, Rhode Island.

[27] In 1932, Brown attended a Museum of Modern Art show featuring the work of Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and Richard Neutra.

In 1938, after acquiring land on Fishers Island, Brown convinced his wife that they should hire a modern architect to build their home.

The house, named Windshield, was designed by Neutra and was completed in August 1938, at a cost of $218,000 (equivalent to $4,718,695 in 2023 dollars) and a size of more than 14,000 square feet.

[26] The house was revolutionary in that it had rubber floors, aluminium frame windows and two Buckminster Fuller designed Dymaxion bathrooms.