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If you walk down 14th Street in downtown Sacramento and look at the ground, you might find a relic of craftsmanship from a bygone era in the form of a manhole cover.
Dotted around the street are at least four covers made by the now-defunct Berry’s Foundry, which operated in Sacramento in the mid-20th century at 1817 29th St. They look like battle shields or coats of arms, with a cross and a T emblazoned around the name of the foundry and the city.
These aren’t the drab, flat, cheap manhole covers that have become common in recent decades: look into who made these nearly century-old metal castings and you’ll find stories of people who came to the city from far and wide and left their mark on the cityscape.
Started in America
By 1923, Robert Berry had made it happen.
In a history of Sacramento’s notable residents published that year by G. Walter Reed, Robert Berry was described as “a master of one of the capital’s important industries.”
Reid writes that Berry, who was about 60 years old at the time, had worked in the foundry industry before coming to the United States from his native England with his wife and son in 1907. Berry established Berry’s Foundry around 1920, employing five men during peak season.
Robert Berry was born in England in 1863. He came to the United States at age 43, arriving in Sacramento in 1907. He trained as a foundryman as a boy, worked in Sacramento foundries, and opened his own foundry at 1817 29th St. around 1920.
“The products of this factory are shipped throughout Northern California and the company is doing a very large and gratifying business,” Reed wrote.
It was a long way from where Berry had come from, both literally and symbolically.
Berry also ran a foundry in England. According to his great-grandson Blaine Gaustad, when Berry discovered his business partner had cheated him, he severely beat the man. Given the choice between prison and the army, Berry chose the latter, and served in the Boer War in South Africa in the early 20th century.
After completing his military service, Berry found a better life for himself and his family in Sacramento, where, apart from his business success, he served as secretary of the Sacramento Valley Soccer League, which, as Reid wrote in 1923, “was founded sixteen years ago and now has 1,500 trained in the schools here.”
Berry’s granddaughter, Kathleen McCann, adored him and called him “Daddy.”
“She loved her grandfather,” said Dan McCann of Sacramento, who was once married to Catherine McCann, who died in 2003. “She said he was a jolly man.”
A foundry job can offer a good living for a skilled worker: “The foundry job kind of put our family in the middle class,” Gaustad says.
Certainly, foundry jobs would be plentiful: According to a 1985 Sacramento Bee article, there were about 29,000 manhole covers in the city at the time (more recent figures were not available at press time), and that doesn’t even include all the other local items that can be produced at a foundry, from pipes to light poles.
“The saying goes that most people can be 10 feet away from a casting and not even notice it,” says Doug Kirkle, CEO of the American Foundry Association, based in Schaumburg, Ill. “Castings really are everywhere.”
Sisters Sally Stiles Zanotti (left), Linda Moore, Glory Stiles and Katie Stiles Rogers (right) stand by a manhole cover at the site of Berry’s Foundry, which was founded by their great-grandfather in July.
The decline of the foundry
Berry died in 1941 at the age of 77. At some point, his son, Robert H. Berry, took over the family business. Born in 1897, the younger Berry was a well-educated man, having attended Sacramento High School and served as a radio operator in the Royal Navy in World War I before earning a degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Harold Henderson, writing in Foundry magazine in 1958, described the younger Berry as “a bibliophile of the first waters.”
“His study, living room, bedroom and other rooms were piled high with rare books — first editions, final editions and single editions — bound in every material the imaginative mind of an artistic bookbinder could conceive,” Henderson writes.
His granddaughter Glory Stiles, who called him “Pops,” said Berry’s health and exercise habits helped him live to 98 years old.
Mr. Gaustad, now 75 and living in Massachusetts, was Mr. Berry’s favorite grandson. He still remembers riding in his grandfather’s truck to the foundry and the smell of coke, the coal used in the furnaces. But he also remembers that, although his grandfather was brilliant, he lacked business acumen.
Robert H. Berry, pictured at the far right, became the owner of Berry’s Foundry after his father, Robert Berry, opened the foundry.
Berry’s brother was more moody than his father, but so were the rest of his family. “I know he had PTSD from the war because he had terrible nightmares every night,” Stiles says. “He would toss and turn in his sleep and scream. That’s not unusual for a World War I veteran.”
Berry’s Foundry’s 29th Street headquarters burned down in the 1950s and the site is now a parking lot adjacent to the Capital City Freeway. The foundry appears to have closed around 1963 when it auctioned off parts.
The trellis was cast by Berry’s Foundry on June 26, 2024 in Fat Alley between 14th and 15th Streets in Sacramento.
Some of Berry’s business struggles may not be entirely his own fault. The foundry industry has shrunk considerably over the years. Four or five decades ago, there were 5,000 foundries in the U.S.; today there are just over 1,700, according to Kirkle. Kirkle estimates that six to eight companies do most of the municipal business.
The manhole cover business has changed over the years, from the ornate covers made by companies like Berry’s Foundry to the more modest covers that dot Sacramento’s streets today. A 1985 Bee article noted that newer manhole covers are cheaper and easier to clean.
Eventually, technology may usher in a new era for manhole covers: Bruce Dienst, president of Aurora, Illinois-based Norcan North America, a 42-year veteran of the foundry industry, said foundries now have the technology to customize manhole covers with city logos and other designs.
Dienst said the foundry “really has the opportunity to become much more sophisticated and artistic in terms of the castings that we can offer to the community.”
It’s unclear if or when that era will come in Sacramento. Kevin Waller, the city’s public works superintendent, did not respond to a request for comment.
How the foundry stays afloat
Kathleen McCann never spoke much about the foundry because of her difficult relationship with her father. She had four daughters: Stiles and Katie Stiles Rogers of Oakland, Sally Stiles Zanotti of Acampo, and Cindy Moore of Sacramento.
The manhole cover at Berry’s Foundry was, in a way, peripheral to the family, though inescapable.
Stiles Zanotti said he remembers it being near Mellarkey’s, the now-closed bar and music venue where he worked on Broadway.
Moore’s son, Collin Moore, was visiting Sacramento when his grandmother pointed out the Berry’s Foundry manhole cover, and when he returned home to Shasta High School in Redding, he saw a familiar sight.
“I have a very clear memory of walking across campus one day and realizing that this was a manhole cover from Berry’s Foundry, and mentioning it to my friends, and they all thought it was a really lame thing to point out,” Moore said.
But some, like Dienst, are very concerned about the covers. “Whenever I walk down any street, I always look around and see who made the hydrants, who made the valves, etc.,” Dienst says. “It’s kind of an occupational hazard for a lot of us.”
Manhole covers can also be a creative inspiration: Moore even wrote a 1994 book, “Manhole Covers,” co-written by Mimi Melnick and Robert A. Melnick, that featured Berry’s Foundry.
The cover, cast in Sacramento, also inspired the beer coasters.
In August 2016, artist Russ Muitz created a print of the Berry’s Foundry manhole cover, which sits in a hole at the intersection of 14th Street and Victorian Alley behind Urban Roots Brewing & Smokehouse near Southside Park. He estimates he’s made prints of 300 to 400 manhole covers. The design elements of the Berry’s Foundry manhole cover caught his eye.
Artist Russ Meutz exhibited prints of manhole covers from Berry’s Foundry in Sacramento in 2016.
“I’m always looking for something that has a foundry name and a city name together,” Muitz said.
Muitz then began selling coasters with the same print online.
Stiles said he found the beer coasters on Muitz’s website after reading a news article about manhole covers being stolen in Sacramento and becoming concerned, he searched online for information related to his family’s foundry.
Stiles Rogers recalled his reaction when he saw the coaster.
“I saw the coaster and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s one of the manhole covers that my grandfather’s foundry made,'” Stiles Rogers said.
Muitz said Stiles-Rogers got in touch and eventually sent her the original prints, which she gave to a cousin who cared for Robert H. Berry in his final years.
Descendants of Robert Berry and his son said they are proud that their family history is rooted in the alleys and streets of Sacramento.
“Growing up, and even as an adult, when I see that manhole cover, it really makes me feel rooted in Sacramento,” Stiles said.
Sally Stiles Zanotti, Linda Moore, Glory Stiles and Katie Stiles Rogers, descendants of the founders of Sacramento’s Berry’s Foundry, stand around a manhole cover from their great-grandfather’s foundry on Tuesday, July 16.