Building Modern South Suburban Communities: The Work of McPherson, Swing & Associates

Date: Feb 27, 2025 - Feb 27, 2025

Location:

Chicago , United States AIA Chicago, 35 East Wacker Drive suite 250

February 27 | 5:30 PM

Although under-recognized among his contemporaries today, architect John McPherson, AIA (1908-1970) and his firm McPherson, Swing & Associates, completed diverse and extensive postwar community building work throughout Chicago’s south suburbs and beyond. Through this work, McPherson understood pressing postwar building needs and saw the opportunity for developing entire communities from scratch in the south suburbs.

Join AIA Chicago for a presentation about this important architect.

The heart of the talk will focus on McPherson’s work, from early challenges to his modernist vision for these new communities to the addition of his partner Jack Swing, AIA (1924-2014) and the firm’s strategic expansion to design the schools, public libraries, fire stations, and other municipal and commercial buildings that made the south suburbs thriving postwar communities. 

Register.

 

Speaker: Marcy Dinius

Marcy Dinius
Professor, DePaul University

Marcy J. Dinius is Professor of English and American Studies at DePaul University. Her research focuses on the means and limits of aesthetic and political representation and on the intersection and interaction of print and other forms of human understanding in times of transition. Her previous publications include The Camera and the Press: American Visual and Print Culture in the Age of the Daguerreotype (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) and The Textual Effects of David Walker’s Appeal: Print-Based Activism Against Slavery, Racism, and Discrimination, 1829-1851 (Penn Press, 2022). She has shifted her focus to the mid-twentieth century and is working on books about the community building work of two Chicago area architects, Y. C. Wong and John V. McPherson.