James Grieves, architect behind many major Baltimore projects, dies

James Grieves, an architect who worked on projects for several Baltimore institutions, died Feb. 5 at the age of 92.

Grieves designed projects for Johns Hopkins University, The Walters Art Museum, National Aquarium, Baltimore Center Stage and others.

But his legacy goes beyond his amazing architectural designs. Grieves was also served as president of the Greater Baltimore Lacrosse Foundation, having been an avid lacrosse player and coach himself.

Baltimore Fishbowl is re-publishing the following “9 Over 90” piece from March 8, 2023 that featured Grieves.

James R. Grieves, FAIA

D.O.B. June 27, 1932; Baltimore, MD

Education: 

University of Virginia, B.S.

Princeton University, M.F.A.

Career, Present and Past:

“I never retired from architecture. It started when I was 12 years old, when I redesigned our house on University Parkway. This is what I do. It’s a natural thing,” says the humble but renowned architect who, with his wife Anne, moved six years ago from Charles Street to the Blakehurst retirement community. Grieves officially retired in 1998, but he’s never stopped working as an architect. A former All-American lacrosse player, coach and Greater Baltimore Lacrosse Foundation president, he’s also never stopped exercising or working out each morning.

Grieves’s most recent institutional project is the Foreman’s Branch Bird Observatory for Washington College in Chestertown that is slated to begin construction in fall 2023. For a Western Run private estate Tashiding, on which he has worked since 1999, Grieves’s most recent project was for the owners’ grandchildren: an elaborate, multi-stored tree house the size of an outbuilding. A redesign of the aviary is now under discussion.

On a table in his apartment sits a thick black notebook of photographs, newspaper articles and citations that speak to the creativity and scope of Jim Grieves’s work. In Maryland and throughout the United States, he has designed award-winning buildings at universities, theaters, museums, clubs, secondary schools, shopping centers, condominium complexes and private homes. His career began at Baltimore and Princeton, NJ architecture firms before he joined RTKL (which did much work for the Rouse Company) and then started his own firm, James R. Grieves Associates. In 1990 his firm merged with others to become Grieves, Worrall, Wright and O’Hatnick (GWWO).  

For the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art in Delaware, Grieves worked on three major projects over 50 years. Other notable institutions include Baltimore Center Stage, the Walters Art Museum, the Johns Hopkins University, the National Aquarium, Bowdoin College, St. Paul’s School, Princeton University’s McCarter Theatre and Alexander Hall, a visitors’ center at Everglades National Park, and two visitors’ centers at Mount Vernon in Virginia. From Nantucket to Hawaii and throughout Maryland, more than 50 private residences show the creative talent of this preservationist with a contemporary twist.

Key to Longevity of Involvement: “Love. Love of what I do. I love to design. I’ve been doing it since I was a boy,” he says while sitting in his redesigned, modern apartment at Blakehurst. His office there includes a counter, where he stands to work at his drafting board. Grieves does renderings the old-fashioned way, by hand. “The hard part is trying to explain the three dimensions. Computers can walk someone through a building… That’s why I do models.”

Current challenge: Speaking from a thoroughly engaged point of view, Grieves says, “Meeting the budget. We have a hard time knowing what things are going to cost. The prices of lumber and steel change monthly.”