Lives of Consequence
Horace Havemeyer III '64
After graduating with a B.A. in English, Horace Havemeyer III ’64 joined his family’s business, the National Sugar Refining Company before building his career in the publishing industry.
He worked for the Doubleday publishing company for a decade, then took courses at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS) and worked for Skyline, the IAUS journal.
In 1981, he founded Bellerophon Publications and served as publisher of Metropolis magazine, an architecture and design monthly which, as Havemeyer wrote in its pages at the magazine’s 30th anniversary, was created with “a fairly simple goal: to create a magazine that explained why buildings and objects looked the way they did.”
“From the beginning, we tried to tell stories from multiple points of view. That meant we’d interview the architect or designer as well as the client and end user. We wouldn’t ignore the larger cultural context. And we’d not only tell a compelling story with text but visually show the process through the layered use of photographs, diagrams, sketches, drawings, and floor plans. Like all design publications, we were interested in showing beautiful buildings and objects, but we weren’t content with merely showing them as objects of desire. Through the years, all of these approaches were refined and improved, but the desire to explain clearly and concisely why things looked the way they did was in our DNA from the start.”
During his career he received many awards and honors such as in 2006, when the American Society of Interior Designers, New York Metro Chapter, created the Horace Havemeyer III Award to honor his ongoing dedication to the design community. That same year, Havemeyer was also awarded a L.H.D. degree by the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.
He was co-founder and director of Exploring the Metropolis, Inc., a non-profit organization led by his wife, Eugenie, that focused on the built environment.
As a student, he was a member of the sailing team and yacht club, and served as secretary and treasurer of Sigma Phi. As an alumnus, he served as a member of the Board of Trustees from 1980-85 and 1991-97, as a reunion volunteer, chair of the special gifts committee and for the Campaign for the Colleges Leadership Gifts Committee. For his service, he received a Hobart Alumni Citation in 1989.
Havemeyer passed away in 2014. He is survived by his wife, Eugenie; mother, Rosalind; and three siblings.