Andrea Madsen Gilmore ’74 has spent her career preserving historic buildings. She has worked to conserve some of New England’s most significant historic structures, including the Massachusetts and Maine State Houses, the Boston Public Library, Fenway Park, the home and offices of Frederick Law Olmsted, the Fairbanks House (Dedham, 1641), and Old Ship Meetinghouse (Hingham, 1681).
Gilmore is a graduate of the School of Architecture at Columbia University. She began her career working as an architectural conservator at the National Park Service. She then moved to the Conservation Center at Historic New England, where she became the director of architectural services. In 1994, she established the New England office of Building Conservation Associates. The focus of Gilmore’s conservation work was diagnosing deteriorative conditions found in historic buildings and devising treatments and design modifications to correct these deficiencies.
In 2018, Gilmore’s work in Massachusetts was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Massachusetts Historical Commission. In 2019, she received the Codman Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Boston Preservation Alliance.
Gilmore has served on the Boston Landmarks Commission and on the Board of Historic Boston, Inc. In her retirement, she continues to share her conservation expertise as a volunteer focusing on projects in underserved communities. One of her current projects is with the Unitarian Urban Ministry, where the oldest wooden church in Boston is being restored and adaptively reused as a performing arts and community gathering space. Gilmore also serves on the boards for the Land & Garden Preserve and Island Readers and Writers in Mount Desert, Maine.
At Carleton, Gilmore was a history major. She spent her junior year studying in England, where she developed her passion for preserving historic buildings. She is married to David Gilmore ’74 and has two daughters, Kate and Alice ’10.