Harry Joe Brown Jr., a real estate executive whose birth into Hollywood royalty presaged the pizzazz he generated by enlisting 34 leading architects to design one house each for a Hamptons residential development, died Nov. 23 at his Manhattan home. He was 71.
The cause was complications of prostate cancer, his family said in a statement. Mr. Brown also had a home in West Palm Beach, Fla.
In the mid-1990s, Mr. Brown acquired 56 acres of scrub land in the hamlet of Sagaponack for $1.6 million when another developer went bankrupt. It was supposedly on the wrong side of the Hamptons ' main road, too far from the beach and too close to East Hampton Airport.
Mr. Brown, widely known by his nickname, Coco, persuaded the architect Richard Meier to recruit a roster of top architects. Mr. Brown ' s idea was that people with a certain blend of wealth, knowledge and pretension would line up for modernist houses designed by the likes of Meier, Philip Johnson, Michael Graves and Richard Rogers.
Mr. Brown offered lower-than-normal prices for the Hamptons properties, less than $3 million, although he also offered less house. Rather than the 10,000-square-foot behemoths of recent years, Mr. Brown thought an exquisitely designed vacation home of 5,000 square feet, even 2,000 square feet, would be sufficient.
" I want to show that every new home here doesn ' t have to be a McMansion, " Mr. Brown said in an interview with The New York Times in 2002.
The developer ' s sales technique included passing out videotape clips showing the site as it might be seen from the driver ' s seat of a sports car. He called the development the Houses at Sagaponac, dropping the final " k " for distinctiveness.
Mr. Brown ' s business acumen was apparent in his tough negotiations over fees with architects, getting deals from suppliers eager to associate their names with the project, and overseeing construction himself to shave costs. Though some noted that his decision to build the houses first and sell them later prevented buyers from trying to negotiate their own changes with the architects, Mr. Brown countered that it saved time and safeguarded the architects ' original visions.
In the 2002 interview with the Times, Mr. Brown acknowledged that it was not easy working with celebrated architects."
Architects can be very self-important, dressing in black like priests and making grand abstract pronouncements about how we live and how we ought to live, " he said. " They do have enormous egos.
"Still, Mr. Brown was hardly reticent in challenging architects, even Johnson, who died in January at age 98. Mr. Brown told Johnson his design was too repetitive; Johnson changed it.
Thomas Phifer submitted a design for an underground house, only to be reversed by Mr. Brown. Phifer said, " The new design is equally fantastic.
"One of the 34 houses was finished and sold. Eight more are under construction, and three of these have been sold. The rest of the lots have the designs completed, but no buyers yet.
The finished project is intended to give a sense of cohesiveness and community. One of the architects, Henry Smith-Miller, told Newsday in 2003 that a drive through the subdivision a decade from then would reveal an obvious " marketing coup.
"Harry Joe Brown Jr. was born Sept. 1, 1934, in Beverly Hills and grew up there. His mother, Sally Eilers, starred in movies with Buster Keaton and Spencer Tracy. His father, for whom he was named, produced many movies for RKO, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, among other studios.
The younger Brown was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Stanford and Yale, where he graduated magna cum laude, and went on to earn a master ' s degree at Oxford as a Marshall Scholar.
He aspired to be a screenwriter and sold some screenplays, one of which, " Duffy, " a robbery caper, was produced by Columbia Pictures in 1970. He produced off-Broadway plays by Edward Albee and Samuel Beckett, as well as a Tennessee Williams play in London. For a time, he lived the artist ' s life in Paris.
His first major real estate coup was in California: He bought 188 acres at the top of Beverly Hills and built 115 houses there.
In the early 1990s, Mr. Brown scavenged through failed savings and loans for cheap properties. A tangled deal in Cape Cod, Mass., resulted in his pleading guilty in 1997 to making false statements to federal regulators. He spent 27 days in a federal prison camp in Pennsylvania, the Times reported in 2004.
But, according to court records and published reports examined then by the Times , he still made $8.4 million on the transaction.
Mr. Brown was divorced from Karen Dempsey and Catherine Nelson Brown, both of whom survive him. He also is survived by his daughters, Morgan Brown and Esme Brown, both of Beverly Hills; and a grandson. Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune on 12/26/2005.
The cause was complications of prostate cancer, his family said in a statement. Mr. Brown also had a home in West Palm Beach, Fla.
In the mid-1990s, Mr. Brown acquired 56 acres of scrub land in the hamlet of Sagaponack for $1.6 million when another developer went bankrupt. It was supposedly on the wrong side of the Hamptons ' main road, too far from the beach and too close to East Hampton Airport.
Mr. Brown, widely known by his nickname, Coco, persuaded the architect Richard Meier to recruit a roster of top architects. Mr. Brown ' s idea was that people with a certain blend of wealth, knowledge and pretension would line up for modernist houses designed by the likes of Meier, Philip Johnson, Michael Graves and Richard Rogers.
Mr. Brown offered lower-than-normal prices for the Hamptons properties, less than $3 million, although he also offered less house. Rather than the 10,000-square-foot behemoths of recent years, Mr. Brown thought an exquisitely designed vacation home of 5,000 square feet, even 2,000 square feet, would be sufficient.
" I want to show that every new home here doesn ' t have to be a McMansion, " Mr. Brown said in an interview with The New York Times in 2002.
The developer ' s sales technique included passing out videotape clips showing the site as it might be seen from the driver ' s seat of a sports car. He called the development the Houses at Sagaponac, dropping the final " k " for distinctiveness.
Mr. Brown ' s business acumen was apparent in his tough negotiations over fees with architects, getting deals from suppliers eager to associate their names with the project, and overseeing construction himself to shave costs. Though some noted that his decision to build the houses first and sell them later prevented buyers from trying to negotiate their own changes with the architects, Mr. Brown countered that it saved time and safeguarded the architects ' original visions.
In the 2002 interview with the Times, Mr. Brown acknowledged that it was not easy working with celebrated architects."
Architects can be very self-important, dressing in black like priests and making grand abstract pronouncements about how we live and how we ought to live, " he said. " They do have enormous egos.
"Still, Mr. Brown was hardly reticent in challenging architects, even Johnson, who died in January at age 98. Mr. Brown told Johnson his design was too repetitive; Johnson changed it.
Thomas Phifer submitted a design for an underground house, only to be reversed by Mr. Brown. Phifer said, " The new design is equally fantastic.
"One of the 34 houses was finished and sold. Eight more are under construction, and three of these have been sold. The rest of the lots have the designs completed, but no buyers yet.
The finished project is intended to give a sense of cohesiveness and community. One of the architects, Henry Smith-Miller, told Newsday in 2003 that a drive through the subdivision a decade from then would reveal an obvious " marketing coup.
"Harry Joe Brown Jr. was born Sept. 1, 1934, in Beverly Hills and grew up there. His mother, Sally Eilers, starred in movies with Buster Keaton and Spencer Tracy. His father, for whom he was named, produced many movies for RKO, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, among other studios.
The younger Brown was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Stanford and Yale, where he graduated magna cum laude, and went on to earn a master ' s degree at Oxford as a Marshall Scholar.
He aspired to be a screenwriter and sold some screenplays, one of which, " Duffy, " a robbery caper, was produced by Columbia Pictures in 1970. He produced off-Broadway plays by Edward Albee and Samuel Beckett, as well as a Tennessee Williams play in London. For a time, he lived the artist ' s life in Paris.
His first major real estate coup was in California: He bought 188 acres at the top of Beverly Hills and built 115 houses there.
In the early 1990s, Mr. Brown scavenged through failed savings and loans for cheap properties. A tangled deal in Cape Cod, Mass., resulted in his pleading guilty in 1997 to making false statements to federal regulators. He spent 27 days in a federal prison camp in Pennsylvania, the Times reported in 2004.
But, according to court records and published reports examined then by the Times , he still made $8.4 million on the transaction.
Mr. Brown was divorced from Karen Dempsey and Catherine Nelson Brown, both of whom survive him. He also is survived by his daughters, Morgan Brown and Esme Brown, both of Beverly Hills; and a grandson. Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune on 12/26/2005.
Harry Joe Brown Jr., a real estate executive whose birth into Hollywood royalty presaged the pizzazz he generated by enlisting 34 leading architects to design one house each for a Hamptons residential development, died Nov. 23 at his Manhattan home. He was 71.
The cause was complications of prostate cancer, his family said in a statement. Mr. Brown also had a home in West Palm Beach, Fla.
In the mid-1990s, Mr. Brown acquired 56 acres of scrub land in the hamlet of Sagaponack for $1.6 million when another developer went bankrupt. It was supposedly on the wrong side of the Hamptons ' main road, too far from the beach and too close to East Hampton Airport.
Mr. Brown, widely known by his nickname, Coco, persuaded the architect Richard Meier to recruit a roster of top architects. Mr. Brown ' s idea was that people with a certain blend of wealth, knowledge and pretension would line up for modernist houses designed by the likes of Meier, Philip Johnson, Michael Graves and Richard Rogers.
Mr. Brown offered lower-than-normal prices for the Hamptons properties, less than $3 million, although he also offered less house. Rather than the 10,000-square-foot behemoths of recent years, Mr. Brown thought an exquisitely designed vacation home of 5,000 square feet, even 2,000 square feet, would be sufficient.
" I want to show that every new home here doesn ' t have to be a McMansion, " Mr. Brown said in an interview with The New York Times in 2002.
The developer ' s sales technique included passing out videotape clips showing the site as it might be seen from the driver ' s seat of a sports car. He called the development the Houses at Sagaponac, dropping the final " k " for distinctiveness.
Mr. Brown ' s business acumen was apparent in his tough negotiations over fees with architects, getting deals from suppliers eager to associate their names with the project, and overseeing construction himself to shave costs. Though some noted that his decision to build the houses first and sell them later prevented buyers from trying to negotiate their own changes with the architects, Mr. Brown countered that it saved time and safeguarded the architects ' original visions.
In the 2002 interview with the Times, Mr. Brown acknowledged that it was not easy working with celebrated architects."
Architects can be very self-important, dressing in black like priests and making grand abstract pronouncements about how we live and how we ought to live, " he said. " They do have enormous egos.
"Still, Mr. Brown was hardly reticent in challenging architects, even Johnson, who died in January at age 98. Mr. Brown told Johnson his design was too repetitive; Johnson changed it.
Thomas Phifer submitted a design for an underground house, only to be reversed by Mr. Brown. Phifer said, " The new design is equally fantastic.
"One of the 34 houses was finished and sold. Eight more are under construction, and three of these have been sold. The rest of the lots have the designs completed, but no buyers yet.
The finished project is intended to give a sense of cohesiveness and community. One of the architects, Henry Smith-Miller, told Newsday in 2003 that a drive through the subdivision a decade from then would reveal an obvious " marketing coup.
"Harry Joe Brown Jr. was born Sept. 1, 1934, in Beverly Hills and grew up there. His mother, Sally Eilers, starred in movies with Buster Keaton and Spencer Tracy. His father, for whom he was named, produced many movies for RKO, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, among other studios.
The younger Brown was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Stanford and Yale, where he graduated magna cum laude, and went on to earn a master ' s degree at Oxford as a Marshall Scholar.
He aspired to be a screenwriter and sold some screenplays, one of which, " Duffy, " a robbery caper, was produced by Columbia Pictures in 1970. He produced off-Broadway plays by Edward Albee and Samuel Beckett, as well as a Tennessee Williams play in London. For a time, he lived the artist ' s life in Paris.
His first major real estate coup was in California: He bought 188 acres at the top of Beverly Hills and built 115 houses there.
In the early 1990s, Mr. Brown scavenged through failed savings and loans for cheap properties. A tangled deal in Cape Cod, Mass., resulted in his pleading guilty in 1997 to making false statements to federal regulators. He spent 27 days in a federal prison camp in Pennsylvania, the Times reported in 2004.
But, according to court records and published reports examined then by the Times , he still made $8.4 million on the transaction.
Mr. Brown was divorced from Karen Dempsey and Catherine Nelson Brown, both of whom survive him. He also is survived by his daughters, Morgan Brown and Esme Brown, both of Beverly Hills; and a grandson. Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune on 12/26/2005.
The cause was complications of prostate cancer, his family said in a statement. Mr. Brown also had a home in West Palm Beach, Fla.
In the mid-1990s, Mr. Brown acquired 56 acres of scrub land in the hamlet of Sagaponack for $1.6 million when another developer went bankrupt. It was supposedly on the wrong side of the Hamptons ' main road, too far from the beach and too close to East Hampton Airport.
Mr. Brown, widely known by his nickname, Coco, persuaded the architect Richard Meier to recruit a roster of top architects. Mr. Brown ' s idea was that people with a certain blend of wealth, knowledge and pretension would line up for modernist houses designed by the likes of Meier, Philip Johnson, Michael Graves and Richard Rogers.
Mr. Brown offered lower-than-normal prices for the Hamptons properties, less than $3 million, although he also offered less house. Rather than the 10,000-square-foot behemoths of recent years, Mr. Brown thought an exquisitely designed vacation home of 5,000 square feet, even 2,000 square feet, would be sufficient.
" I want to show that every new home here doesn ' t have to be a McMansion, " Mr. Brown said in an interview with The New York Times in 2002.
The developer ' s sales technique included passing out videotape clips showing the site as it might be seen from the driver ' s seat of a sports car. He called the development the Houses at Sagaponac, dropping the final " k " for distinctiveness.
Mr. Brown ' s business acumen was apparent in his tough negotiations over fees with architects, getting deals from suppliers eager to associate their names with the project, and overseeing construction himself to shave costs. Though some noted that his decision to build the houses first and sell them later prevented buyers from trying to negotiate their own changes with the architects, Mr. Brown countered that it saved time and safeguarded the architects ' original visions.
In the 2002 interview with the Times, Mr. Brown acknowledged that it was not easy working with celebrated architects."
Architects can be very self-important, dressing in black like priests and making grand abstract pronouncements about how we live and how we ought to live, " he said. " They do have enormous egos.
"Still, Mr. Brown was hardly reticent in challenging architects, even Johnson, who died in January at age 98. Mr. Brown told Johnson his design was too repetitive; Johnson changed it.
Thomas Phifer submitted a design for an underground house, only to be reversed by Mr. Brown. Phifer said, " The new design is equally fantastic.
"One of the 34 houses was finished and sold. Eight more are under construction, and three of these have been sold. The rest of the lots have the designs completed, but no buyers yet.
The finished project is intended to give a sense of cohesiveness and community. One of the architects, Henry Smith-Miller, told Newsday in 2003 that a drive through the subdivision a decade from then would reveal an obvious " marketing coup.
"Harry Joe Brown Jr. was born Sept. 1, 1934, in Beverly Hills and grew up there. His mother, Sally Eilers, starred in movies with Buster Keaton and Spencer Tracy. His father, for whom he was named, produced many movies for RKO, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, among other studios.
The younger Brown was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Stanford and Yale, where he graduated magna cum laude, and went on to earn a master ' s degree at Oxford as a Marshall Scholar.
He aspired to be a screenwriter and sold some screenplays, one of which, " Duffy, " a robbery caper, was produced by Columbia Pictures in 1970. He produced off-Broadway plays by Edward Albee and Samuel Beckett, as well as a Tennessee Williams play in London. For a time, he lived the artist ' s life in Paris.
His first major real estate coup was in California: He bought 188 acres at the top of Beverly Hills and built 115 houses there.
In the early 1990s, Mr. Brown scavenged through failed savings and loans for cheap properties. A tangled deal in Cape Cod, Mass., resulted in his pleading guilty in 1997 to making false statements to federal regulators. He spent 27 days in a federal prison camp in Pennsylvania, the Times reported in 2004.
But, according to court records and published reports examined then by the Times , he still made $8.4 million on the transaction.
Mr. Brown was divorced from Karen Dempsey and Catherine Nelson Brown, both of whom survive him. He also is survived by his daughters, Morgan Brown and Esme Brown, both of Beverly Hills; and a grandson. Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune on 12/26/2005.
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