Collections : [Hill-Stead Museum]

The Whittemore collection of photocopied letters at Hill-Stead Museum numbers 1562 items, a mere fraction of the material held by the Whittemore family at the Harris Whittemore, Jr. Trust offices in Naugatuck, CT, and not accessible to the public. Judicious selection of documents worthy of photocopying, given resources at Hill-Stead, winnowed the selection to selected items pertaining to Alfred Pope's Malleable Iron business in Cleveland, Ohio, and elsewhere in the mid-west, the Pope family's activities, Alfred Pope's art collecting, and the construction of the Pope's Euclid Avenue house in Cleveland [mid 1880's], Hill-Stead in Farmington [1898-1901], Westover School [1908-9] and the Halle Bros. department store building in Cleveland [1911-13], a joint real estate venture by Alfred Pope and J. H. Whittemore. All letters written by Alfred's wife, Ada, or daughter, Theodate, are also included. Alfred Pope is best known at Hill-Stead as the collector of French Impressionist masterpieces that are the hallmark of the museum's holdings. However, an understanding of Pope's business life is important to understanding him, therefore, archivists selected letters that marked important moments in the growth of his companies or that summarized activity, problems, or plans, yielding insight into Alfred Pope's general thought process, and personality. Business matters and art-related topics are intertwined within various correspondences. Lengthy business letters include brief asides about art and vice versa. Business-related correspondence outnumbers art-related correspondence, yet combined the letters reveal much about the patriarch of the Pope family, and without whose collection Hill-Stead Museum would not exist.