Background
Arthur D. Gilman was born in 1821 at Newburyport, Massachusetts, United States.
Arthur D. Gilman was born in 1821 at Newburyport, Massachusetts, United States.
Gilman was educated at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
Mr. Gilman's first and most distinguished building in Boston was the Arlington Street Unitarian Church, dedicated in 1861 and still standing, often compared to Sir Christopher Wren's famous London church, St. Martin-in-the- Fields. At one time he was a member of Gridley J. F. Bryant’s office where he helped prepare plans for the Boston City Hall on School Street, erected between 1862 and 1865. A civic minded architect, Mr. Gilman was the first to propose a reclamation plan for the waste lands of Boston, afterward known as Back Bay, a project completed some years later.
After the close of the Civil War he collaborated with Edward H. Kendall in preparing competitive drawings for the new State House at Albany, but their plan submitted in 1867 was not accepted. The following year Mr. Gilman joined Mr. Kendall in establishing an office in New York, and they designed the Equitable Life Assurance Building at 20 Broadway, of which George B. Post served as Consulting Architect. Following the erection of the structure, said to have been the first office building in New York to be equipped with elevators, Mr. Gilman prepared plans for the Equitable Building in Boston. Built on Milk Street in 1873 following the great fire of that year which devastated the business section of the city, it stood until recent years when demolished for the erection of the First National Bank Building on the site.
A member of the American Institute of Architects.