Elliott has an MA in English Literature from Carleton University and a Master of Information Studies (Archives) from the University of Toronto. Working as an archivist with the federal government and as an architectural journalist, Elliot has also worked for Parks Canada, and has written numerous articles about Canada's architectural heritage for the Canadian Register of Historical Places. In 2008, Elliot won the Peterborough Historical Society's F.H Dobbin Award for exceptional coverage of historical events, articles, photos or videos. In 2012, Heritage Ottawa presented Elliott with the Gordon Cullingham Research and Publication Grant for the new extensive research on Ottawa's Clemow Avenue and Elliott presented a paper on the architectural history of Ottawa's Clemow Avenue at the Society for the Study of Architecture in the Canada's Architecture That Speaks conference at Ottawa's Carleton University. Although he lives and works in Ottawa, Elliott returns frequently to Peterborough, the place that first inspired him - and continues to inspire him - to tell the fascinating stories of our Peterborough collective architectural and cultural past.

Stories are part of the fabric of all of Peterborough's historic buildings, and help add special cultural value to the beautiful and varied architecture that characterized the city's golden age of construction. This golden age coincided with the growth of the city from a backwater town in the middle of nowhere into an industrial and financial powerhouse with international connections. The golden age roughly spans the hundred years between 1840 and 1940.

Since February 2007, Andrew Elliott's nearly-weekly column "Walking Back" in the Peterborough Examiner has discussed aspects of Peterborough's buildings and architecture from the perspective of a heritage enthusiast. This book, based on those columns along with dedicated research on some of the key figures in local architecture, explores the various architectural styles of Peterborough, with special attention given to the period from 1870 to 1914, when Peterborough was one of Ontario's major industrial and commercial towns, and Peterborough architects and designers developed some spectacular buildings, many of which still stand and still give character and definition to the look and feel of the city's urban fabric.