John Hancock Callender was born in Kansas City, Missouri on January 18, 1908, the son of Alonzo Lee and Lola (Hancock) Callender. He was educated in the public schools of Kansas City before attending Yale University where he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and from which he graduated with a B.A. degree in English in 1928. He then continued at Yale for two more years studying design. From 1935 to 1939 he attended New York University from which he graduated with a B.Arch.

In 1931 he went to work for the Housing Research Division of John B. Pierce Foundation researching the living habits of families, and designing and superintending the construction of low cost housing. He was an early advocate of prefabricated housing.

During his military service, 1943-1945, he was a consulting architect for the National Housing Agency, Staff Army Engineers, and supervised the remodeling of laboratories for the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Following the war he was in p rivate practice, specializing in private residences, before joining the faculty of Columbia University where he taught from 1953-1954. He then taught at Princeton University 1963-1973, and the Pratt Institute, 1970-1972. During the 1967/1968 academic year he was visiting professor at Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan. He was the author of several books and many articles, and was the editor of Time saver standards for architectural design data, a standard reference for architects. He held membersh ip in the American Institute of Architects, serving as chairman of the small home committee from 1948 to 1950.

He married Mary Carnwath on August 5, 1933; they had one daughter, Janet. He died of cancer in Lansdale, Pa., March 30, 1995.