James Gaddis

Forty-six permitted projects, a typical job value around $129,000, and not a single customer review anywhere — James Gaddis is a Beverly architect whose work shows up in town building files rather than on rating sites. The permit trail is unusually legible. Working from 266 Hale St, the practice pulls building permits for whole-house work in Marblehead and Manchester: enlarging a dormer to fit a bathroom, building living space over a garage with its own kitchenette, a kitchen-and-three-bathroom gut with new plumbing, flooring and millwork, basement remodels, decks, and a siding-and-trim job. BuildZoom lists the practice under bathroom, kitchen and addition design alongside healthcare and multi-family building design. Its Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration, number 177098, is active — confirmed against the state registry, held in the name James Gaddis. BuildZoom also lists a construction supervisor licence, CS-097276, and an architect registration numbered 30940. Sixteen of the 46 projects fall in the last three years, so this is an active practice, not a dormant one. Two things are worth raising before you call. First, the licence listing is muddled: the same architect number 30940 is printed twice with two different expiry dates, August 2025 and December 2015, and three separate home improvement registrations — 126503, 169564 and 144847 — are shown as cancelled alongside the current active one issued in October 2025. Second, the BuildZoom score of 100 sits where a star rating normally would, but it is calculated from permits and licence status, not from anything a homeowner wrote. This is the right call for a Marblehead or Manchester homeowner planning a substantial renovation — an addition, a gut kitchen, a dormer that has to clear setbacks — who wants someone who has filed that exact kind of permit repeatedly in their town. Since nobody has written publicly about hiring them, ask for direct references on comparable jobs, and confirm the architect registration and the current registration number with the state before signing.