Patrick Ahearn FAIA is founding principal of Patrick Ahearn Architect LLC, specializing in historically motivated architecture. Ahearn’s volume of finely crafted and detailed residential work over nearly five decades spans a multitude of classic styles of architecture from city townhouses to island homes. With offices in both the historic Back Bay neighborhood of Boston and on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, these environments provide a rich and fertile background for the creation of classical timeless architecture, appropriate and in scale to each locale.
The firm’s work covers a broad spectrum of projects in the United States including master planning, new construction, historic renovation, and restoration. Ahearn and his team of architects and designers provide a highly educated and schooled knowledge of classic architecture coupled with a keen sense of how people live today, which in turn produces homes that are timeless and responsive to the needs of today’s lifestyles.
Ahearn is a registered architect in 16 states and D.C. He is also professionally associated with the Boston Society of Architects, the Boston Architectural Center, the Boston Preservation Alliance, the National Trust for Historical Preservation, the Back Bay Neighborhood Association, the Back Bay Architectural Commission, the Town of Wellesley Planning Board, and the Town of Wellesley Design Review Board. Prior to founding Patrick Ahearn Architect LLC, Ahearn was a project manager and designer for various architectural firms in Boston, Cambridge, and Bedford, MA.
Ahearn has taught at the Boston Architectural Center, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Rhode Island School of Design, and Syracuse University School of Architecture.
Raised in Levittown, New York, and based in Boston, Ahearn received degrees in architecture and urban design from Syracuse University. Today, he oversees 16 designers in studios in Boston and Edgartown. A recipient of many awards, Ahearn and his work have been featured in numerous magazines and newspapers and on HGTV.
In addition to serving on the School’s Advisory Board, Ahearn is a Syracuse University Trustee and serves on the Syracuse University Boston Regional Council.
Ahearn is author of “Timeless: Classic American Architecture for Contemporary Living” (ORO Editions, 2018), which features 18 Ahearn-designed homes and explains how he adapts and applies philosophy’s greater-good theory to each of his projects. His most recent publication, “History Reinterpreted: The Myles Standish Hotel” (ORO Editions, 2023), showcases the reimagination of the north wing of the 1871 Myles Standish Hotel in Duxbury, Massachusetts, detailing the process of its dramatic transformation into a grand dame seaside estate.
