John Wentworth Peirce came from an old Yankee family, and his lifelong fascination with design and conservation stemmed from deep ties to the New England landscape. He was instrumental in the preservation of large swaths of wilderness in Essex County, on northern coastal Massachusetts; and his architecture firm, Peirce, Pierce and Kramer, designed significant buildings in a modern vernacular.

Peirce grew up in rural Topsfield and received his B.A. from Harvard in 1933, according to an obituary in the Boston Globe. After college he struck out on a series of adventures, including a 450-mile ride along the Alaskan coast in a rowboat. He funded these adventures with real estate work. During World War II, he joined the Navy and became a navigator, part of the first generation of shipmen to work with radar. Returning to the U.S., he earned his master's degree in architecture from MIT.

In 1961 Peirce not only established his own architecture firm, he also launched the Essex County Greenbelt Association, which would go on to secure over 2,000 acres of land for conservation. Peirce, Pierce and Kramer meanwhile became an important modern architecture firm, responsible for designing the Shields Warren Radiation Laboratory for New England Deaconess Hospital, and the Loeb Laboratory and Swope Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.

Peirce and his wife of 55 years, Grace Minot, lived on a farm established by Peirce’s ancestors in 1856, where they cultivated trees and exotic plants. Peirce also enjoyed meeting with his buddies to make history presentations, a monthly event they called the Cheese and Crackers Club.