Brown Bros. to shut longtime Philly branch, move uptown

Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., which finances private businesses and invests for their owners, on Friday plans to close its familiar sandy-colored six-story office at 1531 Walnut St., where it's been since 1927, to move to 20,000 sq. ft. at 130 N. 18th St., Brandywine Realty Trust's 31-story modern office tower at One Logan Square, behind the Four Seasons Hotel. Owner Jim Pearlstein has sought tenants for the ground-floor retail space where Brown Bros. had its wood-paneled branch; broker Steve Viturello of Perna Frederick is seeking office leases for upstairs floors in the six-story building, where Brown Bros. occupied about 23,000 sq. ft. plus the basement.

The firm traces its roots to Philadelphia, where Brown Bros. was founded in 1818 by two sons of the immigrant merchant who started Alex. Brown & Sons (now part of Deutsche Bank). The Brown office has been at 1531 Walnut since the 1920s, when the Philadelphia Stock Exchange was based nearby at Broad and Walnut and most of the city's major banks and brokers nearby.

But the local office has been more of a regional branch even before Brown merged with New York-based Harriman & Co. in the Depression year of 1931. The firm has at least 16 other local offices around the world, including one in Wilmington.

The long shift of Philadelphia's financial district from brick-and-block Walnut St. to the glass-and-granite high rises of Market Street West accelerated with the sale of the city's big financial firms in the 1980s and 90s. "We look forward to continuing to serve our clients in our new home," said Brown Bros. Harriman managing director Clark O'Donoghue in a statement.

"We have been in Philadelphia for 196 years, and in our location on Walnut for almost 90 years, so there's a lot of great history here," Brown Bros.' Philadelphia partner and private-banking head Carl Cutler said in a statement. "But we are also a forward-looking organization" looking to do business in modern space, he added.