Charles Brace Darrow (August 10, 1889–August 29, 1967) is best known for his role in developing the Monopoly board game. Darrow was a domestic heater salesman from Germantown, a neighborhood in Philadelphia (the part of Germantown he lived in is now called Mount Airy) during the Great Depression. The house he lived in still stands at 40 Westview Street. While Darrow eventually sold his version of Monopoly to Parker Brothers, claiming it to be his...
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Charles Brace Darrow (August 10, 1889–August 29, 1967) is best known for his role in developing the Monopoly board game. Darrow was a domestic heater salesman from Germantown, a neighborhood in Philadelphia (the part of Germantown he lived in is now called Mount Airy) during the Great Depression. The house he lived in still stands at 40 Westview Street. While Darrow eventually sold his version of Monopoly to Parker Brothers, claiming it to be his own invention, modern historians treat Darrow as just one of the game's final developers.
After losing his job at a sales company following the Stock Market Crash of 1929, Darrow worked at various odd jobs. Seeing his neighbors and acquaintances play a home-made board game in which the object was to buy and sell property, he decided to make one of those games by himself, with the help of his first son, William, and his wife Ester. Darrow marketed his version of the game under the name Monopoly.
In truth, Darrow was just one of many people in...
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