Harold Curtis Brown

This month is Black History Month, and it is a great opportunity to not only celebrate the past, but the present too.  This week, the spotlight goes to Harold Curtis Brown. 

Harold Curtis Brown is the first African American interior designers.  He attended the Boston School of Fine Arts and the New School of Design.  Mr. Brown decorated in Paris for a period and then ran an art store in Washington D.C, after which he settled down in New York and started designing nightclubs such as Cotton Club, Tilly’s and the Saratoga Club.

Most of Harold’s work was for black clients in Harlem and the Bronx. Not only that, but he also won appeal, appearances and contracts in the upper white class neighborhood in Manhattan.  His most prestigious project was designing the interior of Central Park South’s Hotel Navarro, which is the first Ritz Carlton Hotels. 

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