John McComb, Jr. (1763 in New York City, New York – 1853 in New York City, New York) was an American architect who designed many landmarks in the 18th and 19th centuries.
McComb's father John McComb, Sr. was an architect who designed several Manhattan churches which have since been torn down.
John McComb, Jr. also designed The James Watson House, 1793 at 7 State Street, NYC 10004. Now the Rectory of The Church of Our Lady and St. Elizabeth Seton Shrine, the building was built as the home of James Watson, a Yale College graduate, a NYS Senator, Speaker of NYS Assembly and federal Senator, according to records of The New-York Historical Society. A prosperous importer/exporter, he built his house at the quays so that he could see his ships coming and going. The Watson home was the scene of lavish parties in the mirrored candlelit ballroom. Washington and Hamilton were said to have danced gavottes in these elegant rooms. In 1806, Moses Rogers, the second owner, joined this with a neighboring house which was concealed by a colonnade said to be made from his ships' masts, when he was converting from sail to steam power in his merchant fleet. Fashionable New York moved uptown during the later 19th century. During the Civil War the mansion held government offices. The building is a NYC Landmark and is on the National and State Registers of Historic Places. In 1870 the Catholic Church bought the property from the government for one dollar to establish The Mission of Our Lady to rescue impoverished Irish immigrant women who were being exported to the US with little more than the shirts on the backs. If the woman's relatives could not be found, she would be placed in domestic service in respectable homes in the NY Metropolitan area. The women were rescued because white slavers were also recruiting at the docks. The archives of the parish contain five large volumes from the 1880s through 1912 listing more than 65,000 young Irish women, their age, their ship of arrival, their Irish County of origin and destination in the US. These crumbling books have been stabilized and Pace University history students are digitalizing these records so that they will be available for compute search when the Heritage Hall museum opens in the basement of The James Watson House. Women steerage survivors of the ill-fated SS Titanic were brought to The Mission of Our Lady. First Class survivors were sent to The Waldorf Hotel. In the spring of 2011 the facade of The Watson House is undergoing historic preservation to return it to the condition it was in the Federal period. Some 17 coats of paint were removed from doors and windows by paint conservators to determine the original paint color. Architect for the preservation work was Easton Architects, LLP, a NYC woman-owned firm. The scaffolding will be removed in late spring of 2010 to show how the building appeared in the Federal era. Still owned by the Catholic Church, the complex is supported by investment income from the sale of air rights over the Watson House and the Church for six million dollars. Other famous NYC landmarks by John McComb include NY City Hall, Castle Garden, Gracie Mansion (now home of the mayor) and Hamilton's Grange in upper Manhattan. The Watson House is the only remaining building from the Federal period to show how the whole street looked in the 19th century when the only skyscrapers were church steeples. Now the historic landmark is flanked by two enormous skyscrapers.