Douglas Ellington was born in Clayton, North Carolina in 1886. His father was a farmer, a sheriff, a Baptist preacher and a Civil War veteran. After studies at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, Ellington studied architecture at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania under Paul Philippe Cret (1876-1945), where he learned about the Beaux-Arts style.
Douglas Ellington studies at the University of Pennsylvania and at the Ècole des Beaux-Arts taught him to work in the Beaux-Arts manner. At the beginning of the 20th century, formal architectural training was still a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. It was only after the Civil War that many American colleges began to offer architectural training. The University of Pennsylvania began offering courses in 1874. Most American programs featured instructors trained at the Ècole des Beaux-Arts in Paris to assure that their students had sound compositional theory and classical design instruction. While Ellington was at the University of Pennsylvania, Paul Philippe Cret who had studied at the Ècole des Beaux-Arts headed the program. Born and educated in France, Cret began his formal architectural training in his native city of Lyons. He was Professor of Design at the University of Pennsylvania until 1907, when he resigned to commence his professional practice. Cret taught that architecture was not a matter of historical styles but a problem-solving art in which the creative architect translated the demands of the client’s program into substance.
In 1911, Ellington won the Paris Prize, the first Southerner to do so, to study at the Ècole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The Paris Prize was given by the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, which had been created by former students of the Ècole. The institute set up a series of competitions for architecture students. The Paris Prize offered the opportunity to study at the Ècole des Beaux-Arts itself. During this period, students from the University of Pennsylvania received more national awards than students in any other program in the country.
While studying at the Ècole, in 1913, Douglas won the Prix de Rougevin, the top honor for decorative competitions at the Ècole 
des Beaux-Arts. He was the first American to win this honor. Ellington was able to complete his studies at the Ècole and remained in Europe until 1917. He returned to the United States and joined the Navy during World War I. Given the rank of Chief Petty Officer, he was assigned to the newly instituted Camouflage Department charged with designing patterns that would make ships difficult to spot by enemy vessels or submarines.
After the war, Ellington returned to architecture, working for firms in Pittsburgh and New York. Until 1920 he taught at the Drexel Institute and Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and Columbia University in New York City. In 1920, Ellington set up his own architectural office in Pittsburgh with his brother Kenneth as office manager. While in Pennsylvania Ellington designed seven bridge approaches in Pittsburgh, two restaurants, a church and the Maute Theater in Irwin, PA (1921).
Ellington won the commission to design Asheville’s First Baptist Church and moved to Asheville along with his brother Kenneth around 1925. It was during this period, from 1925 to 1930, that Ellington designed some of his most creative, public buildings. When the Depression hit in October 1929, Asheville’s economic boom ended, bringing to a close the era of growth and development that had begun in the 1890s.
During the 1930s Ellington worked on two federal projects. Beginning in 1935 Ellington worked as lead architect for Greenbelt, Maryland—the earliest of the federal government’s planned communities. along with Reginald J. Wadsworth, architect and Hale Walker, planner. In 1937 he moved to Charleston where he worked on a W.P.A. project overseeing the restoration of the Dock Street Theatre. Although Charleston would become the principal location for Ellington’s practice for the remainder of his career, he retained his license to practice architecture in North Carolina and frequently returned to Asheville where he designed a number of private homes in the area. On August 27,1960, Douglas Ellington died at the Ellington home in Chunn’s Cove.