Thomas P. McCracken, an architect who guided the restoration of Baltimore’s Washington Monument and the Basilica of the Assumption, died of renal failure related to diabetes on Tuesday at Gilchrist Care Towson. He was 75 and lived on Wickford Road in North Baltimore.

Among his many restoration efforts, he once oversaw the re-roofing of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

Born in Butler, Pennsylvania, he was the son of W. Ralph McCracken, who ran a farm cooperative, and his wife, Anna Mae Johnson, a nurse. He earned an architecture degree from the University of Cincinnati. During summers he built barn silos and was an Ohio River boat deckhand.

Mr. McCracken joined the old RTKL firm in Baltimore and, after a few years, became director of Design and Construction at the Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus.

“Homewood at the time had 52 buildings for me to worry about,” he said in a 2022 interview with the Alonsoville Voice, a North Baltimore neighborhood publication. He added that he oversaw the construction of the Space Telescope Institute and Olin Hall. He also made a dozen trips to China for a building Hopkins constructed there.

In 1987, Hopkins began the restoration of Evergreen House. Henry H. Lewis Contractors recruited Mr. McCracken to be project manager, a post he later called “a dream job in many ways.”

“What thrilled him most was being in ‘countless attics, domes, steeples, seeing parts of historical buildings the public never sees,'” Mr. McCracken said in the neighborhood article, where he carried the keys to structures such as Old St. Paul’s Church, St. Ignatius and the Basilica.

“You name it, I had keys,” he said.

In 2000, an anonymous donor gave Hopkins money for a landscaping makeover of its campus with one major proviso: do it immediately. A Baltimore Sun article said the result was trying to squeeze what could have been a three-year project into a six-month time slot.

“You learn all sorts of things when you do something this fast,” Mr. McCracken said. “Do you know it’s harder to get bricks from North Carolina during watermelon season? Truckers can make more money hauling watermelons, so many of our bricks arrived by train,” Mr. McCracken said.

A statement from the firm said, “For more than two decades, Tom was a cornerstone of Lewis Contractors. He helped shape who we are — with honesty [and] integrity… he approached each role with passion, creativity, and a generous spirit. His good humor and steady presence made even the toughest days better.”

He oversaw the campus transition with backhoes and began digging up asphalt walkways that students had trod for decades. In its place, about 900,000 paving bricks from North Carolina – accented by Vermont marble – began to be installed.

Steve Ziger, a friend since their days at RTKL, said, “Tom practiced every aspect of the complex art of architecture and construction, especially with historic structures. He has left a lasting legacy visible throughout our city.”

After leaving the contracting firm, he formed McCracken Consulting LLC and referred to it as his “half-time retirement job.” He worked with nonprofits to manage capital projects, including the restoration of the Clifton Mansion, Roland Water Tower, Outward Bound’s Crimea Mansion, Maryland School for the Blind and Second Presbyterian Church in Guilford.

Mr. McCracken was a passionate sailor, but said he “never had the money to sail big boats.” Occasionally, he would crew. When there was wind, weekends would find him in Lewes, Delaware, where he had a home.

“After a couple of days sailing his 16-foot Hobie Catamaran on the Delaware Bay, he’d come home ‘relaxed as a lamb,'” the Alonsoville profile said of him.

He was a volunteer with the preservation of the Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse off Annapolis. He also worked in the structural and condition surveys of lighthouses on Alcatraz Island and Port Townsend, Washington.

“I’ve never shied away from new opportunities,” he said.

Survivors include his wife of 52 years, Anne Favrao, a writer and journalist; a daughter, Hollis McCracken, of Baltimore; and a sister, Jane Herlihy, of Durham, North Carolina. A son, Jake McCracken, died in 1989. A sister, Barbara Ruhl, died in 1983.

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