Whitehill (Walter Muir) is born in Cambridge.

Walter Muir Whitehill graduates from Harvard College, receives a doctorate from the University of London, and studies architecture in Europe. Upon his return to Boston in 1935, he later writes, “I looked at Boston with the slightest interest.” He serves as director of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, marries Jane Revere Coolidge, and moves to North Andover. Whitehill serves in the Office of Naval Records in Washington, D.C. during World War, then as director and librarian of the Boston Athenaeum (1946-73). Known for his white beard and passion for historic preservation, Whitehill dies in Boston on March 5, 1978, and is buried in Monticello in Virginia.