Note: This story if the first of two about local architecture.
Anyone who travels around Homewood, Flossmoor and Olympia Fields has almost certainly driven past buildings designed by John McPherson. But probably few people know that McPherson, based in Homewood, was an important mid-century modern architect.
Art and architecture historian Alfred Willis was the featured speaker at the Homewood Historical Society meeting in October 2024, and he offered a profile of McPherson’s career and his contributions to south suburban architecture.
Willis said he discovered McPherson after a friend, Nancy Gildart, challenged him to do some research on Homewood architecture. At first, he didn’t know of any architects of note who were associated with the village, but then he learned about McPherson.
“He was an architect of very considerable talent who was very well regarded by his peers in the Illinois architectural community in the 1950s and 1960s,” Willis said. “He was by all accounts an all round nice guy and genuinely important Chicago area architect.”
Black Bear Lodge in the Izaak Walton Preserve is one of John McPherson's most important designs, according to Al Willis. He said the passive solar building is perhaps the earliest of its type. (Eric Crump/H-F Chronicle)
McPherson grew up on the South Side of Chicago and showed interest in architecture while in high school. He received some training and eventually found employment in several important Chicago architects, including Frederick Hodgdon.
Some of McPherson’s early work showed signs he may have been influenced by the Chicago Bauhaus, an avant garde architectural training program.
“The Bauhaus training was highly abstract and was very much concerned with the nature of planes and how planes can be used to define space without actually enclosing anything,” Willis said and showed photos of several McPherson designs that demonstrated that approach.
After World War II, McPherson recognized business was likely to be good in the South Suburbs, so he joined a consortium of 10 clients who intended to build homes in Homewood. The group’s plan was to build homes with the same basic floor plan but distinct exteriors so they could save money on materials bought in bulk.
McPherson’s first Homewood project did not go smoothly, according to Willis. The village board denied the request for permits. At a subsequent meeting, 89 residents, armed with a petition, came before the board to insist the board continue to deny the permits because the plans called for flat roofs.
“They had a number of, in my opinion, rather outlandish views on why these houses should not be built,” Willis said. “One was that it could cause mental harm to people who would happen to look at a flat roof.”
During the proceedings, a trustee told McPherson if he didn’t like the board’s view he should sue. So he did. And he won.
Willis said the case garnered international attention in architectural publications. Several of the consortium partners dropped out of the project after the controversy, but some, including McPherson, stayed. Several of the homes from that project are still standing, Willis said.
The rocky start to his time in Homewood may have led to the design of his most important local building, Willis said.
“I think in order to sort of try to repair his relationship with this town where he decided to live … he offered to design a cabin for the use of the local Boy Scout troops pro bono,” he said.
The cabin was Black Bear Lodge in the Izaak Walton Preserve.
“I think it is unquestionably the most historically significant piece of 20th century architecture in Homewood,” Willis said. “It has a combination of characteristics that might make it unique in the United States or even the world. This is a solar log cabin.”
He said McPherson used principles of design pioneered by the great Chicago modernist architect George Fred Keck, who built one of his first passive solar houses in Flossmoor in 1941.
McPherson not only employed passive solar features in the lodge, he used recycled materials, especially salvaged telephone poles for the walls.
“The whole building provided a lot of object lessons for the Boy Scouts to learn about economics and the environment,” Willis said. “It’s just a beautiful little building that’s highly sophisticated in terms of its formal sources in European modern architecture of the time.”
Although he specialized more in residential design, McPherson also worked with commercial structures, and a number of them are at prominent locations in Homewood and Flossmoor, including the vacant office building at 18708 Dixie Highway in Flossmoor, Fido’s Landing at 2207 W. 183rd St., the Spornette Building at 18240 Harwood Ave., the office building at 17900 Dixie Highway and the office building at 2066 Ridge Road.
The last two were purchased by the Village of Homewood in 2022. Village officials are hoping the Ridge Road property can be redeveloped, although the current structure is likely to be demolished because it won’t support the kind of use that fits in the village’s downtown master plan. The Dixie Highway building, originally the Homewood Public Library, is slated to be demolished to make way for a new water tower.
Willis said McPherson, along with the partner who joined him in 1957, Jack Swing, built a thriving design firm. More of their residential clients came from Flossmoor than Homewood, he said.
“But they were still coming to Homewood for their architecture because Homewood, thanks to McPherson, became in the ’50s, kind of the architectural center of southern Chicagoland,” Willis said.
