Dennis McClendon was a self-taught mapmaker whose work can be found in the 2004 “Encyclopedia of Chicago” and in CTA trains and stations across the city.
McClendon ran his own mapmaking firm, Chicago CartoGraphics, with the help of various contractors. And while he created maps all around the world, McClendon’s first love was his adopted home city of Chicago. He had what friends said was an encyclopedic knowledge of the city and a keen appreciation for its history.
“In an era of boring GIS-created maps, Dennis created elegant maps that were incredibly easy to read, even for map-averse people,” said Jim Peters, a friend and colleague. “His maps are truly everywhere.”
McClendon, 67, died of complications from pancreatic cancer Aug. 8 at his mother’s home in Arlington, Texas, said his sister, Denise Carriveau. A resident of the Printers Row neighborhood for more than 40 years, he had been diagnosed with cancer in May.
Born and raised in Texarkana, Arkansas, McClendon worked while in high school as a disc jockey for KOSY-AM, a now-defunct radio station in town, under the name Mark Austin. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1979 from the University of Tulsa, where he edited the student newspaper, and he picked up a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1982.
Always interested in maps, McClendon did freelance map work and graphic design work during college and law school. After graduating from the University of Texas, McClendon moved to Chicago to take a job at an accounting firm in its legal research department, his sister said.
McClendon then went to work for the American Planning Association in Chicago, helping to publish its monthly magazine. He continued creating maps on a freelance basis and in the mid-1990s left the APA to form his own mapmaking business, Chicago CartoGraphics. The company created maps for transit agencies, book publishers, real estate firms and the tourism industry.
McClendon produced the color-coded map of CTA “L” lines, which were renamed and identified by color, starting in 1993, and he later was the creator of the Chicago Department of Transportation’s bike map. He also produced maps for the American Institute of Architects’ book “AIA Guide to Chicago Architecture,” and for transit agencies around the country.
“The map of the CTA ‘L’ line he designed for the city is elegant in its simplicity,” said Chicago-based consultant and researcher Jeanne Marie Olson, who knew McClendon from ORD Camp, an invitation-only technology conference in Chicago that both attended many times. “Like the voice of the CTA announcements that says, ‘Doors closing,’ everyone traveling Chicago transit will have interacted in some way with Dennis because of his design and his passion.”
McClendon was enlisted to write several entries and design and produce all 442 maps in the seven-pound, 1,117-page “Encyclopedia of Chicago,” which was published in 2004 and which was a 10-year collaboration between the Chicago Historical Society and the Newberry Library.
“Dennis was a walking encyclopedia on facts regarding Chicago, both historical and present-day,” said Jim Wales, a neighbor and fellow board member of the South Loop Neighbors community organization. “He was our go-to person on building activity in the South Loop but because of his knowledge base, he was also our go-to person to run the (South Loop Neighbors) trivia night events. He possessed an extensive knowledge regarding Chicago that will be impossible to replace.”
Olson recalled McClendon’s “passion for this city, his deep knowledge of its history and its lore.”
“His love for maps and Chicago was so enthusiastic that it just spilled over and made everyone in his orbit enthusiastic about Chicago history as well,” Olson said. “He was always the first to offer a spare sofa for an out-of-town colleague who was traveling through, or to chase down the answer to a truly unusual Chicago-related question.”
McClendon created a free website, Chicago in Maps, that contains a variety of Chicago maps dating back to 1834, as well as thematic maps. He also worked as a certified tour guide who was vice president of the Chicago Tour-Guide Professionals Association.
McClendon lectured on Chicago’s history and cartography at venues including the Newberry Library and for the Chicago Map Society, and he frequently commented about Chicago-related subjects on Reddit under the screen name “MrDowntown.” He was active in a variety of map-oriented organizations, including the all-volunteer North American Cartographic Information Society, where he was president and also helped plan annual conferences in various cities.
That work included designing and making all poster-sized signage for conference sessions, as well as creating and hosting a cartographic-oriented version of the game show “Jeopardy!,” for annual conferences, called “Geodweeb Geopardy.”
McClendon also was quoted widely in the news media about the vagaries of cartography, particularly in a world of Google Maps and other online tools.
“Mapmaking is full of judgment calls,” McClendon told the Tribune in 2009. “Now that so much of this judgment is being done by machine intelligence, we’re in a funny situation where we don’t know where things are coming from.”
In 2008, McClendon authored the booklet “The Plan of Chicago: A Regional Legacy for the Burnham Plan Centennial,” as an introduction to Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago and as a way to celebrate the plan’s 100th anniversary.
McClendon was active with the South Loop Neighbors community group since helping to found it in the mid-1980s. He also traveled widely, including to far-flung locales as Romania, Montenegro, Thailand and Japan.
He was a member of the Central Electric Railfans’ Association and a volunteer disc jockey for CRIS Radio in Chicago, reading newspapers and periodicals to the visually impaired.
In addition to his sister, McClendon is survived by his mother, Merida.
A memorial service will take place at 5 p.m. Monday, at Grace Place Episcopal Church, 637 S. Dearborn St.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.