Howard Townsend

Howard Townsend’s quick grasp at the essentials of court practice, backed by profound knowledge of the law, brought him professionally into a commanding position. His fellow-lawyers gave very practical testimony to Townsend’s knowledge and judgment by naming him, during the twenty-four successive years from 1901 to 1925, as chairman of the Bar Association’s important Grievance Committee. Townsend was one of our busy lawyers who never spared himself in giving time and thought to the conducting of the city’s charitable institutions. In his service of many years on the boards of four or five city hospitals, he was considered an ideal trustee; never lending his name without committing himself unreservedly to the duties of the post. For social intercourse, of which he was always fond, Townsend found abundant opportunity. His reading had been wide, from the time when as a boy at Albany he had the run of his father’s large library; one of his college classmates recalls that, when he entered Harvard in 1876, he seemed already to have read everything in both English and French literature. Enlivened by keen sense of humor, this fund of knowledge and information made of Townsend an admirable host. When it is added that in political, economic and social views he was a thorough-going conservative, his personality presented in these day of shifting ideas and unsettled convictions an exceedingly pleasant picture.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1936 Century Association Yearbook