Boyce Thompson

Boyce Thompson, Jr. (born October 1, 1955) is an American magazine editor and the author of five books, including The Forever Home (Schiffer 2023) and Lincoln’s Lost Colony: The Black Emigration Scheme of Bernard Kock (McFarland 2023).

A sixth book, Innovations in Mass Timber, is scheduled for publication by Schiffer in 2024.

Thompson is the founding editor of Residential Architect, Big Builder, iHousing, Residential Developer, Digital Home, and ProSales magazines.

For 17 years, he served as the editorial director of Builder magazine, published by Hanley Wood.

When Thompson was 10, the family moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where in 1973 he graduated from Clayton High School.

Thompson received a bachelor’s degree in English from Northwestern University and a Master’s degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri.

While in college, he served as a county government reporter for the Columbia Missourian and as a Washington correspondent for several newspapers, including the Coalfield Progress (Norton, Va.) and the Brattleboro Reformer (Vermont).

Early in his professional career, Thompson wrote for a wide variety of publications, including The Washington Post, Governing, Changing Times, Venture, Remodeling, and Practical Homeowner.

He served as a Washington correspondent for building and construction titles owned by Reed Elsevier. Thompson went on to serve as a senior editor in the Development Division at Hanley Wood, assisting with the launch of new business magazines such as Building Products, Custom Home, and Kitchen and Bath.

He is the founding editor of ProSales, Residential Architect, Big Builder, and Developer magazines.

Thompson's first history book, Lincoln's Lost Colony, recounts the story of the Lincoln administration's efforts to export formerly enslaved persons during the Civil War.

The scheme proposed by New Orleans trader Bernard Kock was the only major effort to come to fruition.

Lincoln offered to pay Kock and his investors $50 per person to transport up to 500 Blacks to a Haitian island with disastrous results.

The venture effectively ended similar federal efforts.

Thompson is also the author of four architecture books.

His most recent, The Forever Home (Schiffer 2023), is based on interviews with more than 50 new-home owners and architects conducted during the pandemic.

The book highlights methods for producing homes that may last a generation or two, homes without built-in obsolescence.

It profiles of homes with flexible floor plans, long-lasting materials, and built-in defenses against extreme weather.

Other cover stories highlighted the industry's penchant for building impractical McMansions, and the movement in the 1990s toward urban infill construction.

The magazine's August 2006 cover story, "Line in the Sand," highlighted the industry's growing reliance on undocumented workers.

At the time, illegal immigrants accounted for one in seven construction workers, fueling the industry's rapid, profitable growth.

Builder was named the best business publication in America in 2007 by the American Society of Business Publication Editors.

For 12 years, Thompson directed the editorial council at Hanley Wood, at one time one of the 10 largest business publishers in the United States, setting editorial policy for more than 30 business magazines.

Thompson was born in Bangor, Maine, the son of Boyce Thompson and Patricia Marie Simmers.

The family moved to Bronxville, New York, after the elder Thompson finished his service in the Air Force Reserves.

The July 2008 issue of Builder, cited in scholarly works, was devoted entirely to the issue of sprawl.

The New New Home (Taunton Press 2014), chronicles innovations employed by builders and architects to survive the great housing recession of the early 21st Century.

His premise, according to a review in the Chicago Tribune, was to inform homeowners how they could protect the value of their home in the event of another downturn by buying the most energy-efficient, green home without "bloated" space.

Thompson speculated that builders would remove these best practices from homes to save money once the housing recession ended.

The New New Home was named book of the year by the National Association of Real Estate Editors.

As editor of Builder magazine, the leading periodical for one of the biggest industries in the United States, Thompson regularly challenged the industry to build more efficiently, to use more authentic and flexible designs, and to leave a softer environmental footprint.

In Anatomy of a Great Home (Schiffer 2018), Thompson demystifies, the best practices of award-winning residential architecture, using common language rather than rarefied architectural prose.

The book, in its second printing, profiles more than 50 award-winning residential projects with goal of improving residential architecture in the United States.

Thompson’s previous architecture book, Designing for Disaster (Schiffer 2019), outlines techniques to build and design homes to withstand the growing, largely unheeded threat of natural disasters.

Few new homes in the United States are built to withstand the impact of tornadoes, landslides, hurricanes, earthquakes, and fires.

Building codes provide scant protection in only a few cities where major storms have claimed lives.

"For the most part, it's the Wild West," Thompson told Fast Company.

The problem is systematic rather than technological, Thompson said.

Most of the engineering needed to protect homes has been done.

Designing for Disaster received a gold award in the architectural category from the Independent Book Publishers Association.