Heli Meltsner

Heli Meltsner is a long-time historic preservation consultant, the author of the Poorhouses of Massachusetts: a Cultural and Architectural History (2012) and an editor of Saving Cambridge: Historic Preservation in America’s Innovation City (2013). She is curator of the Cambridge Historical Society and serves on Cambridge’s Avon Hill neighborhood conservation district commission. Heli graduated from Swarthmore College and trained in historic preservation at Columbia School of Architecture. She was also senior planner with the Framingham planning department. A resident of Cambridge, she is passionate about historic houses and helping them survive to tell their stories. Especially memorable for her was a visit to England’s Letchworth Garden City and Voysey’s Perrycroft, both models for the houses in this book.