Wherever a tourist goes in Washington, he usually finds that a fellow named McShain has been there before him. Though he lives in Philadelphia, slim, silver-mustached John McShain, 50, has built so many of Washington's public buildings that he has trouble keeping count. Among them: Jefferson Memorial, the new State Department Building, the National Airport terminal and he was the biggest prime contractor of the mammoth Pentagon.
Last week, when the 15 bids were opened for the contract to renovate the White House, at a cost of $4,160,000 plus a fixed fee, McShain was the winner again. The highest bid was a fixed fee of $950,000; the lowest, $100,000, was McShain's. Said McShain: "I figured nobody would go as low as that, so I bid it. I may not make a nickel on it, but I've done so much work in Washington, I just thought I'd like to add the White House."
The Carpenter's Apprentice. McShain, the son of a prominent Philadelphia builder, entered Georgetown University at 19, intending to become a lawyer. But when his father died in John's freshman year, he decided to carry on the business. For three years he worked on the job with his employees, learning to be a carpenter ("That's what a builder really is"). At night he went back to the office to study bookkeeping and estimating. In 1930 he got his first chance—the Philadelphia Board of Education's $2,100,000 Administration Building. "It looked a lot bigger to me," says McShain, "than the $83 million Pentagon years later."
He did such a good job on the Philadelphia building that others, chiefly in Washington, quickly followed.
The Master Builder. During World War II he had a peak of $150 million worth of buildings under way at one time, spent a year completing the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park. "Sometimes," says McShain, "there's money in such jobs, sometimes there isn't. But I'd rather break even on a monumental building than make a million on an uninspired warehouse." Nevertheless, McShain did well enough to buy the 600-room Barclay Hotel on Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square, to become part owner of the 400-room Claridge Hotel in Atlantic City, and co-owner and president of the Atlantic City Traction Co.
McShain now has $100 million worth of buildings under contract, including Washington's $21.6 million General Accounting Office and the $16.8 million Clinical Health Center. He has just completed the $3.8 million Du Pont Circle underpass. On the White House job, he has to contract to complete it in 660 calendar days. He feels sure he can do it, though he won't have room to use more than 300 workers at a time. His big worry: dodging the souvenir hunters.