McCornack, Walter

Biography

Walter McCornack was born in Oneida, Illinois. He attended Knox College and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1903. He worked in the office of Edmund M. Wheelwright in Boston from 1909 to 1913. He succeeded Frank S. Barnum as the architect for the Cleveland Board of Education from 1914 to 1925, an era of substantial growth for the Cleveland Public Schools. In early 1925 he joined Franz C. Warner as a firm (Warner & McCornack) until George Evans Mitchell was added as a partner in March 1928 (Warner, McCornack & Mitchell). He left the firm later that year. During the Hoover administration he was appointed Chair of the Chamber of Commerce committee on blighted districts and slum clearance. He was the architect of the Cedar - Central Homes in 1937 (becoming known as a pioneer in slum clearance), one of the first three public housing projects in the nation. He returned to Boston in 1939 to become dean of the School of Architecture and Regional and City Planning at MIT. He retired in 1945. He died in Littleton, New Hampshire.