Baltimore Architecture Foundation

1854-1910

T. Buckler Ghequiere (later in life he dropped the final e) was born June 14, 1854, the grandson of Robert Cary Long, Sr. (1760-1833), generally considered Baltimore’s first native professional architect. Long’s son, Robert Cary Long, Jr. (1810-1849) was well known in his time, and in ours, as one of the most important architects in the development of the profession. Sarah, the daughter of Robert Cary Long, Sr. by his second marriage, married Louis J. Ghequiere at St. Paul’s Church on July 28, 1853 and had a son–T. Buckler–approximately a year later.

Ghequiere was proud of these family connections in the architectural profession. At the age of about 22 he wrote an informative article for the American Architect and Building News, fondly praising his grandfather and uncle, obviously admiring their works, naming a number of them and reciting family history in these two earlier generations. If he had had an offspring who became an architect, this surely would be recognized as a dynasty.

T. Buckler Ghequiere worked for J. Crawford Neilson for five years. He opened his own office about 1876, and he advertised “making a specialty of church work [as well as] plans for all kinds of buildings and superintends the erection of the same.”

Ghequiere admired the architectural works of the past and regretted their loss and alteration; today we would call him a preservationist. By 1877, his age about 23, one of his earliest commissions was the remodeling of the Richmond County (Virginia) Court House. Writing about this project in the American Architect and Building News he notes that the Court House was built in 1748 and

it may … be [of] … interest to you and to the profession at large, for me to put together in readable shape some items about its history and structure, especially as the plan is somewhat peculiar; besides which it does not appear to me to be exactly right to alter such buildings without preserving in some suitable way … a description of them as they now stand and have stood for a great number of years. Especially does it not seem right regardlessly [sic] to destroy them or heedlessly to add to them, when we recollect that many important events have occurred within them in our country’s history, and that men of note, whose deeds have left enduring marks behind them, have spent the majority of their working hours in them. Therefore, before their ancient shape and appearance are so changed by the progressive wants of those who now use them as to leave but a vestige remaining, it becomes our duty to those who have preceded us, to give the world some record of them, that they may not be clean forgotten.

He continued with a brief history of the northern neck of Virginia, noting its landmarks, still prized to this day, and the history of this Court House. He recited its dimensions in detail and its conditions, and described its unique plan, the last illustrated with a plan drawing. He presented a drawing of its principal elevation with a verbal explanation of the same. He concluded the article with a stated intent to describe other historic buildings of the region.

With his second and third commissions (discovered to date) in this area he must have had a strong connection there. The Historic Architects’ Roundtable has found several Virginia churches by him in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, and he claimed even more. Most of his work was in Baltimore and within Baltimore’s area of influence, but several church works in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, indicate a valuable patron or friend there, probably the Bishop, a geographically-unusual happening for Baltimore architects in this period.

In 1882 his residence and office address was at No. 49 St. Paul Street, later re-numbered as 227 St. Paul Street, his address in the Baltimore City Directory until 1910. From about 1897 to 1902 he was in partnership with Howard May (1879-1941), who later formed a partnership with Wilson Levering Smith (1873-1931) as Smith & May. George A. Frederick, in his 1912 Recollections, mentioned that Ghequiere was among the deceased.

Like his parents and grandparents, he was a life-long active member of St. Paul’s Church, originally designed by his grandfather (its 1817 walls were incorporated into the present building by Richard Upjohn in 1856 after it burned in 1854). For many years he served as librarian for the parish’s famed choir of men and boys.

He died January 7, 1910 and was buried in St. Paul’s Cemetery, Baltimore, on the 10th, but his grave is not marked.

James T. Wollon, Jr., AIA