The Brown Contracting and Cement Factory

The Brown Contracting and Cement Factory. Tybee Island Black History Trail. , One of the most prosperous businesses on Tybee Island, with a 40-year tenure, was Walter "Contractor" Brown's Cement Plant. Mr. Brown, who was born in 1917 on Daufuskie Island, South Carolina and moved to Tybee as a teenager, having completed his education through the 6th grade. On Tybee, he initially sold fruit and then worked for a carpenter before starting his own cement and contracting businesses. But prior to that, Mr. Brown sold coal and fat wood (aka fire kindling) along with cement, until the need for coal subsided. His son, Walter Brown Jr. recalled, "It was the only concrete plant on the entire island Black or White, and that was during segregation. But we did business with everybody. Because I can assure you, we had a different relationship…..it's different when you live there than when you're coming to visit." Brown Sr., alongside his sons, manufactured (i.e., batching, mixing, transporting and placing, compact and placing, and curing and finishing) the concrete in their Tybee Island plant located on four-acres near the Tybee Lighthouse. The concrete was then loaded onto Brown's fleet of trucks, continuously processing the mixture while being transported to job sites in Savannah and the neighboring region. Brown's business also supplied concrete for the foundations of many homes and businesses on the island. Mr. Walter Brown and his wife, Mrs. Celia Corine Bryan Brown, remained residents of Tybee Island until their respective deaths in 1996 and 2002., (caption) , Aerial of 81 Solomon taken from Savannah Multi-List Corporation 2023.