Then and now: Brown Metal Works

Thoburn C. Brown, born in 1907, was an inventor who knew his way around a pair of tinsnips. Thoburn and his older brother William, born in 1902, attended Lewis and Clark High School. By 1929, both worked in their father’s business, Brown Metal Works.

Section:Gallery

Sun., June 7, 2020

Circa 1935 - Outside Brown Metal Works at Grant Street and East Sprague Avenue, sits one of the all-aluminum airplane designed by Thoburn C. Brown and built by Thoburn and his older brother William R. Brown in the early 1930s. “We were tinsmiths,” said Thoburn Brown in 1972. “Its the only way we knew how to build.” The first plane was destroyed in a fire and this one, and possibly another, were sold off. The aircraft company never took off but the business built truck trailers, ore cars and bus coaches for many years.

Northwest Room Spokane Public Library
2020 - The 1924 building at Sprague Avenue and Grant Street was home to the Brown Metal Works in the early 1930s. The company’s coachworks and metal fabricating business outgrew the space and moved to factory near Felts Field. This building was a dairy and market in the late 1930s. and today houses Contract Design Associates, a business which sells office furniture.

Jesse Tinsley The Spokesman-Review Buy this photo