James R. Grieves, an architect who won awards for Baltimore’s Center Stage and the Brandywine River Museum, died of heart failure Feb. 5 at the Blakehurst Retirement Community in Towson. He was 92.
His father, Edward Grieves, a stockbroker, drowned while fishing when Mr. Grieves was a child. His widowed mother, Frances Rutledge Kefauver Grieves, later married Charles Rowland Posey, and the family settled on University Parkway.
Mr. Grieves, a Baltimore native, was a graduate of St. Paul’s School, the University of Virginia, and Princeton University. At his St. Paul’s graduation, he received the Kinsolving Fellowship Award, the highest honor for a senior. He also played on the first-string All-Maryland lacrosse team.
While a student at the University of Virginia Architectural School, he was captain of the lacrosse team and was named an All-American. While at Princeton, he earned a Master’s degree in architecture and coached lacrosse.
His wife, Anne Braff Grieves, said he was most proud of his creation and expansion of the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. He took an old grist mill and made it into a setting for the works of Andrew Wyeth, his father, N.C. Wyeth, and other members of the Wyeth family, among other artists associated with the Brandywine School of Painting.
Mr. Grieves got the commission in 1968 when he was 35. The museum opened in 1971, and an addition followed in 1984 and again in 2004.
“We’ve grown with this museum. We’ve learned from this museum,” Mr. Grieves said in a Baltimore Sun interview.
Mr. Grieves also won honors for converting the old Loyola High School building, adjacent to St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church, into what is now Baltimore Center Stage.
The converted school opened as a theater in 1975 after Center Stage suffered a multi-alarm fire at its previous playhouse on East North Avenue in what had been an Oriole Cafeteria. The design was awarded a national American Institute of Architects Award in 1978.
“Jim was at the forefront of historic preservation,” said an associate, David Wright. “He was humble about submitting Center Stage for consideration. But he was delighted when the recognition came.”
He also worked on the Baltimore School for the Arts, the Walters Art Museum and the restoration of the Wilmington, Delaware opera house which contained a cast iron facade made in Baltimore.
His firm designed the Marine Mammal Pavilion, a large and colorful expansion to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Other projects included Richardson Hall at Princeton and Tashiding, a Baltimore County residence.
Mr. Grieves was a past president of the Lacrosse Foundation, enjoyed golf and played at courses from Carmel, California to Nantucket Island.
In addition to his wife of 57 years, survivors include three children from his first marriage, to Ann Watts: James R. Grieves Jr., of Baltimore, Richard B. Grieves, of Easton, and Katherine Grieves Perkins, of Warner, New Hampshire; a stepson, Hilary Gans; a sister, Ann Posey Cherry; nine grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
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