Ayers Saint Gross

Ayers Saint Gross is the successor firm to Sill, Buckler & Fenhagen, founded in 1912 and known as the designer of Baltimore City College, the third oldest public high school in America, founded downtown in 1839, and having occupied eight different locations in its now 175-year-old history. Some of City College's earlier buildings were landmark structures in their era, built by several famous local architects of the time. Buckler & Fenhagen won the national competition in the 1920s with their design for their landmark stone Collegiate Gothic "Castle on the Hill" on the highest hilltop in the northeast section of Baltimore overlooking the downtown skyline to the south. Built at a cost of over $2.4 million, during 1924-1928, the "Castle" still serves a magnet college preparatory high school that focuses on the humanities, liberal arts, social studies and the classics and is traditionally one of the best performing student body in the state. As a humorous note, carved limestone faces of both architects are placed as small stone "gargoyles" on either side of a large central window over the front entrance.

In 1938, the original partners hired Richard “Dick” Ayers, whose employment was interrupted by World War II when he served in the U.S. Navy and toured Japan as a member of the "Strategic Bombing Survey". Ayers returned to Buckler and Fenhagen after the war and in 1955, he and Julius Meyer took over the firm. They were joined later by Kelsey Saint, a Yale classmate, and the partners went on to design Shriver Hall, the Newton White Athletic Center and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library on the "Homewood" campus of The Johns Hopkins University. In 1984, Adam Gross was also recruited to the Firm. Under his leadership, "Ayers Saint Gross" became one of the most honored design studios in Maryland.

Gross and principal Jim Wheeler, who joined the firm in 1987, repositioned the firm to focus on college and university work. They based this shift on the growing need for campus design expertise in response to the children of "baby boomers" flooding higher education. That strategy led to the firm’s rapid growth.

The firm opened offices in Baltimore, Maryland, Tempe, Arizona, and Washington, D.C. as a result of various work projects for universities in those locations. Today, the Baltimore office of "Ayers Saint Gross" is headquartered in an old Procter and Gamble soap-making factory, renovated into an office park named "Tide Point" on the southside of the City’s "Inner Harbor".