Personal Data

Frederick (Frederic) B. Pope was born on June 19, 1838, in Walpole, New Hampshire, the son of Samuel Pope and his wife Sarah Stetson Mellish (daughter of Stephen Mellish).

He died on April 19, 1927, in Cambridge.

He was unmarried.

Career

Frederick B. Pope was an architect and building contractor in Boston from about 1869, when he opened an office at 81 Washington.  Prior to that, he was a hay and lumber dealer in association with his father, Samuel Pope, with whom he lived in Cambridge.

Boston Daily Advertiser, 1Apr1871

Throughout his career, he was alternatively known as Frederick Pope, Frederic Pope, and, most frequently, Fred Pope.

He built the first storage warehouse in New England in Cambridge, and is credited by Bainbridge Bunting in his Houses of Boston’s Back Bay with designing and building over thirty houses in the Back Bay.

Acting as both an architect and a contractor was considered unethical by the Boston Society of Architects.  Bunting notes that “although he is listed as an architect in the Boston Directory between 1871 and 1893, he is mentioned neither in the history of the Boston Society of Architects nor in any account of early Boston building.  The group of designs ascribed to him seems to be little more than an echo of current architectural fashions.”

Back Bay Work