John H. Beyer, founding partner of Beyer Blinder Belle (BBB), has died at the age of 92. News of his passing was confirmed by BBB. Beyer’s wife of 60 years, Wendy Beyer, died on January 10.
Beyer, Richard Blinder, and John Belle founded BBB over five decades ago after working together at Victor Gruen’s New York City office. Blinder passed away in 2006, and Belle in 2016.
“Planning, restoration and the design of new buildings in historic settings are the fundamental underpinnings of our firm,” Beyer once said, in describing BBB’s philosophy. “With every project, whatever its focus, I’m always thinking of all three.”
Beyer’s commitment to historic preservation is exemplified in so many BBB projects, like its renovation of the Frick Collection with Selldorf Architects. BBB converted the historic A. A. Thomson & Co. Warehouse into the South Street Seaport Museum, salvaging a lower Manhattan relic. The New York office is today behind a restoration of Harlem’s Apollo Theater.
Beyer was born in 1933. In 1954, he graduated with an undergraduate art degree from Denison University in Ohio, where he studied sculpture and music. He then enrolled at Harvard GSD where he earned his Bachelor and Master of Architecture.
After Harvard, in 1961, Beyer went to work for Gruen, where he met Blinder and Belle. The three architects founded BBB in 1968. Beyer kept academic appointments those years and was a visiting critic at numerous universities.
In 1979 Beyer was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects. BBB was awarded the 1995 AIA Architecture Firm Award.
At BBB, Beyer worked with the Walentas family and Two Trees Management Company on revitalizing DUMBO, and had a longstanding business relationship with the Met, a point of personal pride for the architect. Beyer worked on the Met Breuer and Michael C. Rockefeller Wing renovation with WHY Architecture.
Elizabeth R. Leber, BBB managing partner, said after his death: “Many of us have indelible memories of working with Jack and of the impression he made on clients, projects, and our own careers. He demanded the best of us, and he made us all into the people that we are today.”
“Each and every one of us carries forward his legacy in the work we do under his name,” Leber continued, “now and into the future.”
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