Brown, Eleanor McMillen

Brown, Eleanor McMillen

(1890–  ) interior decorator; born in St. Louis, Mo. After design study in New York and Paris, in 1924 she opened the first U.S. full-service interior decoration firm, McMillen, Inc. The timeless quality of her designs came from a canny mixing of classical revival styles, attention to architectural detail, and good scale. A 1952 Légion d'Honneur for promoting modern French furniture highlighted a successful career of some 60 years.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.