John McShain

Who was John McShain?

John McShain was a highly successful American building contractor known as "The Man Who Built Washington."

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the son of Irish immigrants, John McShain graduated from St. Joseph's Preparatory School in 1918 after having attended La Salle College High School for several years. His father founded a successful construction company, which he was forced to take over at age twenty-one, when his father died in 1919. Under his management, the company became one of the leading builders in the United States. From the 1930s to the 1960s, McShain's company worked on more than one hundred buildings in the Washington, D.C. area. Most notably, the company built or was the prime contractor for a number of landmark structures including The Pentagon, the Jefferson Memorial, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Library of Congress annex, Washington National Airport, and the 1950–51 reconstruction of the White House. Of his many construction projects, McShain also built the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, New York.