Baskervill

Rooted in the belief that great design is the result of asking the right questions and truly listening to the answers, Baskervill offers creative architectural, interior design, and MEP engineering solutions to a varied client base, from hospitality to workspace, healthcare, manufacturing, banking and cultural institutions.

Celebrating 120 years in 2017, today Baskervill is one of the nation’s oldest continually operating architectural firms.

Our team is a diverse group of architects, interior designers, and engineers who are bold and collaborative, fueled by a passion for the profession and a fondness for strong coffee. While a sense of history grounds us, it’s the idea that design can solve the problems of the future that keeps us inspired. We’re out to start a conversation about what great design really means and how it can transform the guest and patient experience, wake up tired workplaces, and revitalize entire neighborhoods.

We don’t create in a vacuum. We know that great design is about more than beautiful buildings, setting trends or serving egos. At the end of the day, it’s about people—all kinds of people, with different needs, desires, and stories to tell—and everyone deserves access to it. With imagination and the will to try, great design can happen for any client, in any place, at any time. We know, because we do it every day.

Let’s start at the beginning, 120 years ago, in 1897—the year Amelia Earhart was born, the Library of Congress opened, and Frank Lloyd Wright moved his famous firm to the legendary Steinway Hall. Much further south, in the heart of Richmond, Va., architect William Churchill Noland and electrical engineer Henry Baskervill partnered to form a smaller practice. From this humble foundation, the firm worked its way up to prominent residential projects—including homes along historic Monument Avenue—and built quite a reputation in the process. Just six years after the company was founded, Noland and Baskervill received a prestigious commission to design an addition to Thomas Jefferson’s Capitol building.

Designs for the St. James Episcopal Church in Richmond, and Swannanoa, the summer residence of the Dooley family, followed. Signature Baskervill projects including the Medical College of Virginia’s West Hospital (now VCU Health System), the Edgar Allen Poe Museum, and the Richmond Public Library have become beloved landmarks woven into the fabric of the city’s history. In fact, the drawings for many of these early projects completed between 1897 and 1951 are in storage at the Virginia Historical Society.

While our name has evolved—from Noland and Baskervill to Baskervill & Lambert, Baskervill & Son, Baskerville & Son, and finally to Baskervill sans “e”—our belief in meaningful, transformative design and close partnerships with clients hasn’t changed a bit. Mergers with firms like Tyler, Nash and Farmer (1984), Hochheiser Ross Design Group (1999), Rose Architects (1999), and BAM Architects (2013) have helped us to reinvent ourselves in pivotal ways while reinforcing the fundamental values we’ve held all along.

Over the course of the past fifteen years, we have grown from a small, local firm licensed in just Virginia and Maryland into a nationally recognized design practice licensed and working in 45 states and Puerto Rico.

It might seem like a revolutionary shift, but it’s all part of a purposeful, strategic vision for the future: we’re advancing with our clients to explore the incredible possibilities of their brands as we strengthen and develop our own.