RARE “American Industrialist" Alfred Atmore Pope Clipped Signature For Sale

Up for sale "American Industrialist" Alfred Atmore Pope Cut Signature.

ES-148A

Alfred Atmore Pope (July 4, 1842, North Vassalboro, Maine – August 5, 1913, Farmington, Connecticut)

was an American industrialist and art collector. He was the

father of Theodate Pope Riddle, a noted American

architect. Alfred Pope's ancestors came to the New World from Yorkshire, England

in 1834 and settled in Massachusetts. Pope's father Alton was a successful

businessman during The Great Exhibition at The Crystal Palace in 1851. In 1861 he moved

his family to Ohio, in an old Quaker town in the Connecticut Western Reserve. Later in Cleveland,

Alton set up a wool business again with his sons as partners. In 1862, Alfred

Pope joined the production company of Alton Pope and Sons and in 1866 married

Ada Lunette Brooks of Salem, whose family, like his, had roots in the wool

industry. The couple's only child, Theodate, was born one year later. In 1869

Alfred Pope left the family business and, with loans from his brother-in-law

Joshua Brooks and others, bought into the Cleveland Malleable Iron Company, a

concern which had been formed a year earlier by five Cleveland men. Pope

entered the firm as secretary and treasurer and within ten years rose to the

rank of president, an office he held until his death in 1913. With the rapid

industrialization and urbanization of the country, malleable

iron – a form of metal exceptionally stronger than forged

iron – became an important commodity in the construction industry. Under Pope's

leadership the Cleveland Company eventually expanded to include a group of six

malleable iron and steel castings plants in the mid-west, known as the National

Malleable Castings Company. He was also involved with several other manufacturing

enterprises and financial institutions. As his company and personal wealth

grew, Pope moved his family up the ladder of Cleveland society and eventually

built a Richardsonian Romanesque townhouse on Euclid Avenue in one of

the city's most fashionable districts. John D. Rockefeller was among his neighbors.