During the first years of the twentieth century, Frederick Pepper headed the carpentry shop at Marshall Field & Co., the leading Chicago retailer. His son, Stanley Pepper, started his own construction company in Chicago in 1927. For the next 75 years, Pepper Construction would be led by successive generations of Frederick Pepper's sons and grandsons. Richard S. Pepper took over the business from his father in 1957 and continued to establish Pepper Construction as one of the region's leading general contractors for the next three and a half decades. Richard's son, J. Stanley Pepper, claimed the company reigns in the early 1990s. Over the next decade, he expanded Pepper Construction to Texas, California, and Indiana, eventually placing all business operations under a newly formed holding company in Chicago, Pepper Construction Group LLC. Pepper Construction Co. continued to operate out of Chicago in the early 2000s, claiming about 1,000 employees and $900 million in revenues.

This entry is part of the Encyclopedia's Dictionary of Leading Chicago Businesses (1820-2000) that was prepared by Mark R. Wilson, with additional contributions from Stephen R. Porter and Janice L. Reiff.