Brown, Elizabeth Mills (American preservationist, contemporary)

Elizabeth Mills Brown was born on November 28, 1916. She received a B.F.A. from Bennington College in 1939, and a master's degree in art history, specializing in architectural history, from Yale University in 1963 (advised by Carroll L. V. Meeks). Her major work, New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and Urban Design (Yale University Press, 1976), is the authoritative manual on significant New Haven buildings. Brown also researched and wrote several historic survey reports on New Haven neighborhoods, most significantly Wooster Square; wrote a number of articles on Connecticut architects and buildings for various encyclopedias and other publications; and gave regular lectures at the New Haven Colony Historical Society on the history of New Haven's built environment. She was a charter member of the New Haven Preservation Trust, a founding member of the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation and the Guilford Preservation Alliance, and a member of the Society of Architectural Historians. She received many awards, including the Connecticut Society of Architects/American Institute of Architects Lay Person Award. At the time of her death, on December 27, 2008, she was compiling an architectural survey of the state of Connecticut as part of the Society of Architectural Historians' series Buildings of the United States.