Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Gill was graduated in 1936 from Yale University, where he was a member of Skull and Bones. He was a long-time resident of Bronxville, New York and Norfolk, Connecticut.

A champion of architectural preservation and other visual arts, he chaired the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and authored 15 books, including Here at The New Yorker and the iconoclastic Frank Lloyd Wright biography Many Masks.

In September 1989, Gill wrote the controversial article "The Faces of Joseph Campbell" for the New York Review of Books where he made a number of accusations against Campbell (later disputed by others), including charging him with anti-Semitism. Gill was marginally acquainted with Campbell through the Century Club. After his article, many people and from various walks of life who knew Campbell personally, vigorously denied the accusations levied by Gill.

Brendan Gill died of natural causes in 1997, at the age of 83 .

Gill's son, Michael Gates Gill, is the author of A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else. His youngest son, Charles Gill, is the author of the novel The Boozer Challenge, a sexy romp of the struggling upper class with tongue-in-cheek humor and wit.

Books

• Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright
• Here at The New Yorker
• Late Bloomers
• Ways of Loving (short stories) (1974).

Articles

• I Can Hear it Now - album of speeches and news broadcasts, 1932-45 (with Spencer Klaw).
• Transit Radio, Inc.
• Hiding telephone lines in the ivy at Princeton (with M. Galt).
• Reviews Bill C. Davis' "Dancing in the End Zone", James Duff's "Home Front" and Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The King and I".
• West 44th Street development.