John Erwin Ramsay Jr., president and son of the founder of the Ramsay firm and manager of its Raleigh office, has announced he is leaving Ramsay Burgin Smith Architects.

The Raleigh office, where he will continue to be in charge, has been sold to the younger but larger GMK, a 60-employee firm based in Columbia, S.C.

Ramsay, Burgin, Smith will continue to operate its main office here at 625 W. Innes St. and the firm’s third office in Redlands, Calif., headed by Geoff A. Bonny, who formerly worked in the Raleigh office. William R. Burgin succeeds Ramsay as head of the firm and managing partner of the Salisbury office.

The Raleigh office will now be known as John Ramsay, GMK.

Paperwork has not been completed, but the change was technically effective Sept. 1. John Ramsay is selling all his stock back to the firm. No family member will own any part of the business. Stockholders will be Burgin, Bonney and Donna Sturkey Smith. The Ramsay family will continue to own the building at 625 W. Innes St.

The Raleigh purchase is a total acquisition, Ramsay says. GMK is buying all assets and hiring all the personnel, including Ramsay himself and the other two resident architects, Doug Kuhns and Frank Massaro.

“All the stockholders and I have jointly concluded that the merger and acquisition is in the best interest of both organizations,” Ramsay says. “It’s a very amiable transition, and the two organizations will continue to maintain close business, personal and professional relationships.”

Ramsay added that he’s “really excited” about the move he’s making but is going through “a bittersweet transition. It’s not easy going in to the family you’ve grow up with and loved dearly and saying, ‘I just have to move on.’ ”

Nor is it easy, says Burgin, vice president and treasurer of the firm and head of the Salisbury office, “to lose a partner. But we want everybody to do the things they want to do.”

Ramsay is interested in work architects call “design-build,”which means the architect is also the contractor or works very closely with the contractor.

The Ramsay Burgin Smith firm, on the other hand, “is more involved in design and supervising the construction ... making sure that what they build matches what we drew,” Burgin said. “It’s a more traditional relationship versus what John is interested in.

“We will still have a working relationship with John. He may need us to do some design work or production drawings. Our California office does a lot of drafting for him.”

And, he emphasized, “there is still a Ramsay firm in Salisbury. The folks in Salisbury and Rowan County won’t sense the difference.”

Burgin personally worked for the founder, John Ramsay Sr., longer than anyone else.

“All our services will continue just the way they have been. Ninety-nine percent of all the work we’ve done has been handled by the architects in the Salisbury office. Most of John’s work is in the Raleigh area. This is the home office. We have a lot of work. Our work in Salisbury will produce in excess of a million dollars in fees this year.”

A graduate of North Carolina State University, Burgin joined the firm in 1974, left for work with other firms for five years but has spent 20 years with the Ramsay firm. It provides comprehensive design services for schools, commercial, religious, recreation centers and historical rehabilitation projects, amounting to about $15 million in construction in Salisbury each year.

Other large out-of-area firms have approached the Ramsay office in Raleigh during the past four or five years proposing merger or affiliation for projects in the Research Triangle.

“There’s a lot of growth here, which puts a lot of pressure on the school market. We’ve been in that field since the ’60s,” he says, and firms have been interested in getting access to the Wake County school construction market with which the Ramsay firm is involved.

When inquiries came from GMK, he listened.

The firm was interested in only the Raleigh office, he says, seeing the Ramsay organization as a good way to launch itself into the Raleigh market.

“When I first moved to Raleigh years ago, it wasn’t to practice architecture but to open a construction company. I built homes here until dad decided he was going to retire and created the Ramsay, Burgin, Smith firm. So in a way, it’s returning to my roots.

“And I feel real good about it. It’s a great opportunity for me personally and a great opportunity for the Ramsay firm to continue its strong history of delivering high quality architecture to the local and regional — and now national — markets.”

Ramsay is the third generation architect in his family.

His grandfather, John Ernest Ramsay, was born in 1877 into a family that had been prominent here for five generations.

After attending local schools, he entered North Carolina State College, now N.C State University, with its first class, although he finished as an architectural engineer with a later class because of interim delay.

As a young man he practiced architecture here for a number of years, building the original First Presbyterian manse at the corner of West Innes and South Jackson streets, the rock house at the corner of Bank and Fulton streets, the Irvin Oestreicher home and other business and residential buildings.

But architecture in that day, his grandson says, couldn’t support a family, so he became the manager of Harris Granite Co.

“That was his day job,” his grandson says. He continued to design buildings, including many of the homes in today’s West Square Historic District.

His son, John Erwin Ramsay Sr., often referred to as “visionary” and “architectural giant,” loved his profession with a passion and established the Ramsay firm half a century ago.

A city councilman and strong supporter of historic preservation, he left his imprint on scores of important Rowan County buildings including the library, Civic Center, First Presbyterian Church, Catawba College, the YMCA and many others.

John Ramsay Jr., son of Anne and John Sr., grew up here — and heard a recurring question often.

“Are you going to follow in your father’s footsteps?”

He did.

“But,” he says, “I think some of my gravitation toward the technical and practical areas of architecture ” was at least partially the result of that.

He enjoys telling the story about someone asking Brahms why he had such difficulty writing a symphony.

“He said it was because he couldn’t concentrate with the steps of Beethoven on his heels. And that was partially my problem with John E. Ramsay Sr., the fellow in the American Institute of Architecture.”

In 1976 after he also graduated from N.C. State and served in the Navy, as John Sr. had, he returned to Salisbury to work with his father, Bill Burgin and Donna Smith.

But during that time, he says, the country suffered a serious recession created by the Arab oil embargo and architecture was not booming. “So I actually worked for Beaver Brothers Plumbing and Heating and spent two years working with Beaver Brothers and Ramsay Associates.”

Beaver Brothers’ work with solar heat caught his interest, and he installed some of the first active solar systems in the area.

He moved to Raleigh in 1978 to open a building and development business, Real Property Development, and became a registered general contractor doing both residential and commercial construction, including a $22 million retirement community in Tarboro, simultaneously continuing work here. The Raleigh office became a full-blown architectural office in 1989.