The Brownie character was popular for thirty years, especially in the 1890's. It was the first character in America to have its own line of packaged products, and advertised a variety of products, including the Brownie Camera.

It was a time when horse-drawn carriages rolled over rough and dusty roads; when women wore long dresses with bustles and flounces and donned enormous hats with feathers, flowers and birds; when gentlemen in high top hats flung their heads back smartly, stretched their necks in high stiff collars, fastened their wide silk ties with jeweled stickpins, and carried gloves and walking sticks. It was when mothers dressed their boys in sailor suits, and their little girls in tucked pinafores. like Alice In Wonderland." M.E. Heller

When Cox was ready to retire and have a place in the country as an alternative to his Broadway studio in New York City, he built a seventeen room manor house in Granby to look like a Scottish castle. It boasted an octagonal tower from whose battlements flew a brownie flag. A brownie weathervane twirled in the wind, and a brownie stained glass window stood at the bottom of the principal stairway. There was a barn as well, modern for its day. It housed every kind of farm animal, and the latest farm machinery.