William Adams Brown

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

William Adams Brown (December 29, 1865 – December 15, 1943) was an American minister, professor, and philanthropist from New York City. He came from a prominent family; his father was banker John Crosby Brown. Brown attended St. Paul’s School, Yale University (AB 1886, AM 1888, PhD 1901), and Union Theological Seminary (1890). He was ordained as a Presbyterian in 1893 and studied with Adolf von Harnack in Berlin from 1890 to 1892.

In 1892 he joined Union Theological Seminary as an instructor of Church History, later switching to Systematic Theology and becoming Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology. He retired in 1936. Brown chaired the Presbyterian Church’s Home Missions Committee and helped organize the American Parish on the Upper East Side and the Labor Temple in the East Village. He played a key role in founding Union Settlement in East Harlem, one of the oldest settlement houses and a major social service agency for the poor.

Brown served on the Yale Corporation from 1917 to 1934 and was acting president of Yale University from 1919 to 1920. He married Helen Gilman Noyes in 1892, and they had four children, including Winthrop Gilman “Bob” Brown. The family lived on Manhattan’s East 80th Street and spent summers on Mount Desert Island, Maine. William Adams Brown died in New York City in 1943 at age 77.