Henry King Browning (1869-1936)

He was born at 552 Fifth Avenue, New York City, and was educated at Columbia University before being given an interest in the family firm, Browning King & Co., reputed to have then been the largest wholesale manufacturers of clothing in the world. His health then being frail, he spent several years in Nice on the Côte d'Azur before returning to New York. He was the firm's vice-president for thirty years, and after the death of his elder brother he was president for four years. He was Chairman of the Washington Irving Trust Company in Tarrytown and on his estate there he maintained a school and camp for disadvantaged boys from New York. Along with several friends, he commuted to-and-from work in the city along the Hudson on his 100-foot yacht Gracemere, on which breakfast was served and the morning newspapers lay waiting.

He died of a heart attack after a game of tennis with his friend John H. Perry, of Irvington-on-Hudson. He lived between 768 Madison Avenue in New York City and "Gracemere Hall" (see images) near Tarrytown, which was originally known as "Rockview" when it was first built by Robert Graves. In 1890, H.K. Browning married Daisy Simmons, a maternal granddaughter of Gen. Jacob Gould, Mayor of Rochester. They had 4-daughters who all lived in houses built for them by their father on the 80-acre Gracemere estate.