Louis de Rome (1854-1910): Prominent foundry owner

Louis de Rome and his foundry workers

PLOT 30 

Louis de Rome (May 14, 1854 – January 7, 1910) owned the de Rome Foundry in San Francisco.

De Rome was born in Buffalo, News York, in 1854 and came with his parents to California in 1858. He was reared, educated and learned his trade as a brass molder in San Francisco, eventually becoming the head brass molder at the Garratt Brass Works for eight years.

He eventually founded the Globe Brass and Bell Foundry, of which he is the practical business manager. In 1880, he joined with Neil C. Whyte in founding the Whyte and de Rome Foundry. Over the course of his career, de Rome was responsible for forging many iconic structures, including twenty-seven large bronze lamp-posts for the new City Hall, numerous bells for fire stations, the bell at the San Miguel Mission, the Lick Observatory Medallion and statuary, the Native Sons Fountain in San Francisco, the Robert Louis Stevenson statue in Portsmouth Square, the Mechanics Fountain at Market & Battery, the President McKinley bust in Berkeley,  the Robert Burns Monument in Golden Gate Park and the Christ Of The Andes statue in Santa Clara.

The Whyte & De Rome Foundry also cast one of the most iconic structures at Mountain View Cemetery, the big, bronze elk that sits atop a tumulus in Plot 32. The elk was commissioned by the Oakland Lodge Number 171 of Elks to mark their burial plot at the cemetery. It was completed in 1896.  The elk was modeled after an actual animal in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park known as “Father Elk” who had been moved to the park from the wild. The sculptor was Frank Hapersberger and the cast was completed at the  in Oakland.  The burial plot where the elk stands is known as “Elks Rest,” which is common term for Elks burial plots and they exist in almost every state.

In 1900, de Rome was badly burned, including his eyes, when he was experimenting with Acetylene gas, which was commonly used in welding.

Louis DeRome died January 7, 1910, from heart problems that started aboard the ferry returning from San Francisco in April 1908.

SOURCES: OaklandWiki, Berkeley Gazette, California State Library, Ancestry. com, Oakland Tribune