Alfred Atmore Pope

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 1634 and settled in West Danvers, Massachusetts. Pope's father Alton was a successful woolen goods manufacturer, winning prizes for his mill's samples during The Great Exhibition at The Crystal Palace in 1851. In 1861 he moved his family to Baltimore and then to Salem, Ohio, an old Quaker town in the Connecticut Western Reserve. Later in Cleveland, Alton set up a woolen business again with his sons as partners. In 1862, Alfred Pope joined the firm of Alton Pope and Sons and in 1866 married Ada Lunette Brooks of Salem, whose family, like his, had roots in New England. 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.

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