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It was something they had never been asked to do before, which is saying a lot for Annapolis, MD-based Pyramid Builders, a custom builder of estate homes in the $4- to $10-million range: Install a self-supporting circular limestone staircase in a turret, such as one the clients had seen in a Montreal château.
Architect Vincent Greene had located a company in Montreal that builds such staircases “in the same manner that they would have been built in the Middle Ages,” Greene says, with no steel structures or supports. The company marked the pieces and sent them down to Annapolis for Pyramid to reassemble inside the turret.
“Pyramid already had the tower built,” Greene says. “They had to put the Chinese puzzle together – it was just an amazing thing to watch. It was not something I could have imagined anyone else doing.”
Builders for Life
Architects who work with Pyramid Builders say they call on the company for their most intricate and challenging designs. “They’re our go-to guys,” says Leo Wilson of Hammond Wilson Architects. “They have such an incredible group who are dedicated to top-tier design. Any sophisticated project that isn’t run-of-the-mill, these guys will jump right in.”
That’s because Pyramid, which has been building estates in Maryland for 22 years, employs a staff beyond its construction crews that includes talented painters, tile-setters, and master carpenters and masons to execute almost anything a client requests. And the company maintains strong relationships with artisans and specialists whom they can call upon when they can’t perform a task in-house.
“What we’re looking to do is align ourselves with a homeowner and architect who are after high quality and craftsmanship,” Pyramid Vice President Mark Sanders says. He adds that each site supervisor works on a single project at a time so he can devote his full-time attention to it. The company works on just four to six projects at any one time.
Perhaps the most unique quality about Pyramid is that it calls itself “builders for life,” meaning they don’t disappear once the final punch-list item is checked.
They will help homeowners arrange furniture and hang art. They will come back over the years to repaint or make repairs. “We’ve even hung Christmas lights on homes for clients who have asked,” Sanders says. “If there’s anything they want to have done, we facilitate that.”
