THE McSHAINS: FATHER AND SON

 

John J. McShane/McShain (Sr.) 1860-1919

John J. McShain (Jr.) 1898-1989

 

In 1860 John McShane Sr. was born on a farm in Slaughtmanus, County Derry, Ireland. Learning the carpenter's trade while still young, he emigrated to the United States in 1885, settling in Philadelphia. There he joined the firm of his uncle, William J. McShane, who had established himself as a builder.  In 1888 John Sr. founded a contracting firm in his own right.  He was sufficiently secure by 1893 to marry Catherine Malloy, a woman from his own County Derry. Family lore relates that circa 1900, because of a printer's error, the spelling of their surname was changed to McShain.

 

Of John and Catherine's four children the youngest, also named John, seemed destined for a career in the church or the legal profession until his father's illness and premature death in 1919 forced him to transfer from Georgetown College in Washington to St. Joseph's College in Philadelphia. On his deathbed in 1919, his father asked John to go into the building business. Agreeing hesitantly, John abandoned his studies and joined his father's senior employee, William Cochran, to continue the company. That partnership lasted less than a year; John McShain  proceeded alone to develop what would become one of the five largest construction firms in the United States, operating from his main office in Philadelphia, and from satellite offices in Washington, DC, Baltimore, MD, and Trenton, NJ.

 

In 1927 John McShain married Mary Horstmann, a member of a large Philadelphia Catholic family of wool merchants. By the time that the Great Depression struck, John McShain had proven his company's capability and had developed its long-term strategy; he was able to move quickly into the few growth areas existing in the 1930s. One of these was in government contracts, and his Federal track record over the decade from 1934, when he built an annexe to the Library of Congress, was nothing short of amazing. This was particularly remarkable in view of his Republican sympathies, which did not hinder him from earning the respect and friendship of the Democratic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

 

The Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, NY, built at approximately the same time as the Jefferson Memorial in the late 1930s, set John McShain on a course that would reach its apex in the 1940s, when he built and then extended the Pentagon, moving on to complete the rebuilding of the White House between 1949 and 1952. The scale of these projects was massive. The Jefferson Memorial, completed in 1941, had a contract price of over $2 million, and John McShain was happy to lose 5% in providing a truly public monument. In 1942 the Pentagon was the largest office building in the world when completed in just 16 months, at a contract price of $75 million, representing over $700 million in today's currency. Within a year John McShain was adding two floors to this military headquarters, doubling its capacity to 40,000 personnel operating in over six million square feet, connected by 18 miles of corridors.

 

The White House contract required four years to complete, while President Truman and his family decamped to nearby Blair House. The work involved the gutting of James Hoban's 1815 reconstruction, necessitated by the damage the White House sustained during the War of 1812. Beginning in 1949, the sub-basement area was re-engineered and a structural steel frame was installed to carry an additional floor, adding 38 rooms to the original 32. The $4.25 million contract involved a fixed fee of just $100,000 for the contractor, who lost twice that amount on the overall job, a punishment he willingly bore for the honor of restoring an American icon.

 

The scope of the more than one hundred contracts, in Washington, DC alone, carried out by John McShain, Inc. was equally impressive. It ranged from the Bureau of Printing and Engraving (1935-37) to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (1966-71) --by way of highly visible undertakings such as the Bethesda Naval Hospital (1940), the National (now Ronald Reagan) Airport (1941), the National Institutes of Health (1949-55), the General Accounting Office (1950), the State Department (1961), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (1968).

 

Along the way there were some surprising contractual combinations: in the late 1950s, for instance, McShain signs simultaneously graced the sites of a new building at the British Embassy and the National (Catholic) Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. In later years John McShain became involved in hotel development in Atlantic City and Philadelphia, in one of which, The Barclay, he made his principal home, retiring there in 1976.

 

John and Mary McShain established a charitable foundation in his name in 1948. Their daughter, Pauline Mary, had entered the Society of the Holy Child Jesus two years earlier. This influenced the McShains to take a particular interest in assisting Catholic and other cultural institutions and projects. Over the course of 52 years, many colleges, community organizations and arts-related programs benefited from John McShain Charities, Inc.

 

As a change of pace from the pressures of his construction business, John McShain became interested in horse racing. This led him in 1952 to buy from his maitre d'hotel in Philadelphia, the Barclay Stables located in southern New Jersey. Seeking to expand his stable, John and Mary, attended the sales in Lexington, KY, and in Newmarket, England. At the latter in 1955, John met the legendary Vincent O'Brien and arranged for him to buy some horses for him and train them at the O'Brien stables, Ballydoyle, in County Tipperary. This partnership was extremely productive. In 1957 John's Ballymoss won the Irish Derby and went on the following year to become the champion of Europe. Some of John McShain's other horses, particularly Gladness, also took trophies at numerous classic races in Ireland, England and France.

 

In the late 1950s John McShain joined a consortium that had purchased the 25,000 acre Co. Kerry estate of the Earls of Kenmare. His partners sold their shares to him in 1959, at which time he took over an exemplary stewardship of lands that included Killarney House, the ruins of Ross Castle, Glena Mountain, and two of the famous lakes. In one of these, Loch Lein, is found Innisfallen Island, the site of a famous early Christian monastery. 

 

When the President of Ireland, Sean T. O'Kelly, made an official visit to the United States in 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower invited John and Mary McShain to attend the state dinner at the White House to be given in his honor. At a later date, when  President O'Kelly and his entourage were to spend four days in Philadelphia, President Eisenhower asked John McShain to be his official host. John was delighted to oblige, as he had been introduced to President O'Kelly in Ireland. Subsequently he and Mary had often been guests of the O'Kellys at Aras an Uactaractain. On those occasions John had encouraged his good will trip to America. Throughout Sean T.'s visit to Philadelphia, it was evident that his friendliness and lighthearted spirit won the hearts of everyone who saw him.

 

During 1973 the McShains turned over most of their land to the Irish State, retaining Killarney House and its grounds for their own use. From the day John and Mary had first seen the estate in 1958, they were enamoured by its view of lakes and mountains, and the peacefulness of its paths. Once they had completed the remodeling of the interior of the house, they realized that Killarney was a place where John could finally relax after years of intense pressure from his business interests. But he and Mary were also eager to share the beauty of their new home with family and friends. Among their earliest houseguests, in January 1962, were Sean T. O'Kelly and his wife Phyllis, who returned for another visit in 1964.

 

It was here in Killarney House that the McShains chose to spend their last years, John dying in 1989 and Mary, in 1998. As previously arranged, the entire estate became part of the Killarney National Park at the time of Mary's death. Since then, the distinctive gates and railings of the Killarney House estate have been restored to the style of the Earls of Kenmare, recalling the name by which the estate has always been known to the locals, The Golden Gates. In 1999 the government announced ambitious plans to upgrade structures and services, while the ground floor reception rooms would be restored to the Edwardian period. When the work was completed, Killarney House would be open to the public. As of 2007, no progress had been made toward these goals.

 

Meanwhile, the records of the McShain enterprise in the United States became an important part of the collection of the Hagley Museum and Library, an archive for commerce, industry and technology, in Wilmington, DE. Here in 1996, Hagley mounted an exhibit entitled "John McShain, the Man Who Built Washington". Over the next two years this exhibit traveled to the National Building Museum in Washington, and then to St. Joseph's University, John McShain's beloved Jesuit alma mater in Philadelphia, where as a young man in 1926 he had constructed its signature building, Barbelin Hall.