Walter "Peter" B. Mahony, III  (1944 - 2024)

 

About Peter

 

The Class recently learned that Walter Mahony, known to classmates as Peter or Pete, died in June 2024.

 

Pete was born in Guatemala and resided in Chappaqua, New York, when he entered Princeton. He graduated from Deerfield Academy, where he was on the newspaper staff, sang with the glee club, and played soccer, squash, and tennis.

 

At Princeton, he majored in architecture, ate at Charter Club, played tennis, and was on the WPRB staff and the technical crew at McCarter Theatre. In his senior year, he worked with Professor Michael Graves on a design project for the Trenton urban renewal plan.

 

Roommates included Frank Frederick, Tom Tureen, and Bill Duncan.

 

After receiving his A.B. in architecture from Princeton, Pete earned a B.A. in Architecture from Cambridge (England) University, and then an M.F.A. in urban planning from Princeton.

 

Pete had a distinguished and varied career in architecture, including urban design, landscape design, and city planning. He was also active in community service, including membership on the New York City Community Planning Board and, later, the Charlestown, Rhode Island, Planning Commission.

 

Pete leaves a daughter, Eliza ’96, and son, Andrew ’99, to whom the Class extends its condolences.

Tribute from Charlestown, Rhode Island Planning Commission 

In early June, Chartlestown's land-use community lost its most qualified member with the passing of Walter "Peter" Mahony.

 

Peter was undoubtedly the most qualified person to ever serve on the Charlestown Planning Commission. He was an Architect, a Landscape Architect, and a professional Planner with architectural and planning degrees from Princeton and Cambridge Universities. He had a successful career working on important projects that focused on the sustainable balance between development and land preservation.

 

He gave so much to Charlestown in his volunteer work on the Planning Commission and the ideas, experience, and enthusiasm he brought to the committee working now to develop commercial and village design standards for new commercial development in Charlestown.

 

Peter made so many of our tasks fun. From working the polls on election days to walking the site of a proposed development his laughter could always be heard.

 

Peter had spent summers in Charlestown since he was three years old and eventually retired here. Peter described Charlestown to be the perfect antidote to his fast-paced life in New York City.

 

The Charlestown Citizens Alliance was proud to endorse someone as highly qualified as Peter in the elections he ran in for Planning Commission. You can read how highly qualified he was in his last campaign profile. There is a video of Peter on that page if you are missing his voice.

 

We were so lucky for the time he did donate to our town. We miss him and our thoughts are with Erin, his family, and everyone who loved him. 

Nassau Herald

Classmate Memories and Tributes

Ernest Hutton:

I was the one who mentioned to Dave Ames that i had just learned that Peter Mahony had died. I got the info from the very laudatory obituary that you have seen from Charlestown RI, where Peter spent I think the last 25 years or so serving his community. I was not in touch with him in that but it appears he was happy and productive. 

 

Peter’s  real first name was Walter, I assume a family name. I don’t know where the name Peter came from (his middle initial was B.) but all his friends at Princeton knew him with that moniker.  He was a classmate in the school of architecture, I remember exactly where his drafting table was in the back left of the studio, next to Lonnnie Golf.  I lost touch with him for the years in which he was studying architecture in Cambridge and working abroad. We reconnected in the 80s in New York when he was working for Whittlesey and Conklin (later Conklin and Rossant), architects and planners, and then for Vollmer Associates, a large Transportation/engineering firm.

 

We met often for lunch, and worked together on some projects in which I used Vollmer as a consultant on various planning projects. But my primary personal memory was the Fourth of July 1976 when he and his wife hosted a wonderful 200th US Anniversary party at their upper Westside apartment overlooking the Hudson River and watching the tall ships sail up and down. Unfortunately, their marriage ended in divorce some years later.  Peter eventually moved to Charlestown Rhode Island and we lost touch.

 


L-R: Levy, Mahony, Segal, Hart, Lagemann, Thacher, Nahas, June 23, 2017 at the dedication of Jay Lagemann's

large (18' tall, 22' wide) outdoor sculpture, "Swinging Jenny" in NYC at VIA 57 West

 

If you have photos, information, or memories that you wish to share, please send them to the '66 Memorial Team (66_MemorialTeam@googlegroups.com). We will add them to this page.