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- Nicholas Noyes Dies; Civic, Cultural Leader
Nicholas H. Noyes, 94, 5625 Sunset Lane, a philanthropist and a member of the board of directors of Eli Lilly & Co. since 1913, died Saturday at home. Mr. Noyes was chairman of the company’s Finance Committee, a position to which he was elected when he retired in 1948. Born Aug. 8, 1883 at Dansville, N.Y., he attended Lawrenceville (N.J.) School and was a graduate of Cornell University. During his college career he became interested in publishing while serving as business manager of the Cornell Daily Sun. Following graduation in 1906, he moved to New York City, where he worked for McClure’s Magazine and the Crowell Publishing Company. He was credited with creating the “Win a Pony” contest to stimulate sales of Crowell publications. During a visit to Indianapolis he met Marguerite Lilly, a niece of Col. Eli Lilly, founder of the Lilly firm. They were married in 1908, and Mr. Noyes left Crowell two years later and moved to Indianapolis, where he joined the Lilly company. He began as a clerk and accountant and in 1912 was named assistant treasurer. In 1913 he became purchasing agent. Because of the difficulty in obtaining paper boxes in 1919, Mr. Noyes recommended that the company buy the Bee Hive Paper Box Company, now a part of Creative Packaging Company, a Lilly division. He negotiated the purchase and was elected the new company’s first president. He relinquished that post in 1947. In 1932 he was elected secretary and treasurer of Eli Lilly & Co. and in 1937 became vice-president and treasurer. Active in many civic, cultural and philanthropic projects, Mr. Noyes was an honorary governor of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. He was one of 25 distinguished Hoosiers inducted into the Indiana Academy in 1971. The academy honors persons who have made significant contributions to the state in public service, higher education, arts, science, literature and general culture. A large portion of the money used for construction of the $4.5-million Children’s Pavilion at Methodist Hospital was donated by Mr. Noyes. He had served on the hospital’s board of directors.
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In 1971, a $5.6-million hospital at Mr. Noyes’ birthplace at Dansville was named Nicholas H. Noyes Memorial Hospital. Its second floor was designated a memorial to his parents and paternal and maternal grandparents. The following year, Earlham College at Richmond named the center building of its new $3.65-million science complex the Noyes Science Hall, recognizing a major gift from Mr. Noyes to the Earlham endowment fund. The Noyes estate on Sunset Lane was deeded to Butler University in 1956. In 1960, Butler presented him with an honorary doctor of laws degree. Mr. Noyes was a member of the board of directors of Lilly Endowment Inc. from the time of its incorporation in 1937 until 1976. He was one of the reorganizers of the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce in 1938 and served as its president and member of its executive committee until 1947. During World War II, he was president of the Indianapolis Council of the Navy League, which had the largest membership of any Navy League council in the United States. Long active in alumni affairs of Cornell University, he was president of the national Cornell Alumni Association in 1919 and 1920. In 1933 he was elected a trustee of the university and in 1956 became trustee emeritus. He had served as a member of the executive committee and on the investment committee of the university’s board of trustees. An executive vice-chairman of the successful Cornell campaign to raise $15 million in 1949-50, Mr. Noyes served as a presidential councillor in 1966, an honor that has been accorded only 15 alumni in the history of Cornell. He was a recipient of the Cornell Engineering Medal for distinguished leadership and service to the university. In 1963, he and the late Mrs. Noyes, in conjunction with Mr. and Mrs. Spencer T. Olin of East Alton, Ill., donated a world-famous collection of books relating to Lavoisier to the university. Lavoisier was the 18th-century French scientist known as the founder of modern chemistry. Mr. Noyes gave the university $300,000 in 1964 to endow a professorship in engineering and a year later began a Cornell scholarship program for Indiana high school graduates. The scholarships are in memory of the Noyes’ late son, Nicholas H. Noyes Jr. Mr. Noyes’ largest contribution was made in 1965, when he gave $3 million to the university for professorships, to supplement salaries of faculty members and to support intercollegiate athletics. A $1-million gift from him was received by Cornell in 1969. He was a member of the Business Council, an honorary member of the Speech Rehabilitation Institute at New York City and national director of the Boys’ Clubs of America. He was a former member of the board of managers of the Memorial Center for Cancer and Allied Diseases at New York City and a director from 1933 to 1963 of Indiana Bell Telephone Company. In 1953, Mr. Noyes was one of nine Hoosiers selected to participate in an 83-man advisory committee on international trade for the United States Senate Banking and Currency Committee. He was a former director of the old Fletcher Trust Company of Indianapolis and past campaign chairman of the Indianapolis Community Fund. A director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago from 1933 to 1951, he was a former president of the executive committee of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association. He was a member of Second Presbyterian Church, of which he had been a trustee. On Dec. 6, 1976, Mr. Noyes was honored at New York City for his more than 30 years of service in helping raise money for Boys’ Clubs of America. He received the “Annual Herbert J. Kempner Distinguished Service Award” at the national board’s annual meeting. The award is named in honor of the former U.S. ambassador to Brazil who gave 34 years of service to the Boys’ Club organization. Mr. Noyes served with more than 250 business executives, lawyers, doctors and university and government officials across the country who contribute their skills, influence and support on behalf of the National Boys’ Club organization. Lilly Board Chairman Richard D. Wood said:
“Mr. Noyes had a long and distinguished career with the company and provided wise counsel on financial matters for more than half a century. His advice, support and friendship will be missed.” Survivors include his daughter, Janet. Services will be held at 2 p.m. Wednesday in Milner Chapel of Second Presbyterian Church, with burial in Crown Hill Cemetery. Friends may call in Flanner and Buchanan Broad Ripple Mortuary from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday. Memorial contributions may be made to a favorite charity.
(The Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis, Indiana, Monday, December 26, 1977)
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Nicholas was living in Indianapolis,Ind at the time of his mother's death in 1949, he was treasurer of the Eli Lily Pharmaceutical firm.
Inducted into the Dansville Area Historical Society Hall of Fame in 1995...
"Sometime around the year 1900, a pair of teenage brothers were spotted in a sheep’s pasture on the outskirts of Dansville, trying to knock little balls into flowerpots with sticks…a game they picked up in college, but which was still largely unfamiliar to most ordinary folks. Within months, the local papers had taken note of the growing popularity of the game, and the owners of the Jackson Sanatorium, who saw the value to their patients of this not-overly-taxing outdoor activity, rushed in to take over what would soon be given the name “Brae Burn.”
The boys were the Noyes brothers, Jansen and Nicholas, and no one could have imagined that, three-quarters of a century later, one of the lads who had introduced golf to Dansville would see his name on a mllion-dollar hospital, just a wedge shot away from the sheep’s pasture in question.
The Noyes’ family had been one of Dansville’s most elite families practically from the day that Daniel W. Noyes (Nicholas’ grandfather) arrived in town in 1849 to launch his law practice. Nicholas, born in Dansville in 1883, graduated from Cornell in 1906, married Marguerite Lilly in 1908, and joined the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company in 1910, headquartered in Indianapolis, where he and his wife would live for most of their lives. He quickly rose in the company’s ranks, becoming vice-president and director in 1913.
In addition to Eli Lilly, Noyes would become president of the Paper Package Company (1919-1947) and director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (1933-1951). Noyes would become one of the wealthiest people ever to have been born in Dansville; in his later years, he would be enormously generous with his money. Both his own Alma mater, Cornell, and that of his wife, Vassar, would receive generous contributions. A residence hall on the Vassar campus would be named after Nicholas’ mother, Emma Hartman Noyes.
Nor was his hometown overlooked. He contributed generously to the Dansville Public Library, giving a memorial fund named after his father, Frederick W. Noyes. (Frederick was one of the key figures in the library’s early history.) In 1949, he and his siblings donated the old family residence on Elizabeth Street to the Dansville Red Cross as a headquarters, in memory of their mother Emma Hartman.
But Noyes’ most noteworthy contribution came in 1970 as Dansville was attempting to raise money for a new hospital building to replace the woefully overcrowded hospital on Main Street, He and Foster Wheeler both contributed $100,000 to the project. That date, they were the largest charitable contributions in Dansville history. His reaction on learning that the hospital would be named after him was (in a letter to attorney Helen Pratt): “I appreciate very greatly the thought of naming the hospital with my name, although I would much prefer that it not be identified just that way.”
Nicholas Noyes died in 1977 at the age of 94. And he never lost his love of golf."
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1883 - 1977 (94 years)
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