Everyone has always wanted to move to New York, it seems. Industrialist and art collector Henry Clay Frick made his fortune turning coal into coke for use in the manufacturing of steel in Pittsburgh. But after an acrimonious falling out with business partner and fellow Pittsburgh tycoon Andrew Carnegie, Frick relocated his family in 1905 to Manhattan, the center of Gilded Age commerce. At first they rented George Vanderbilt’s palatial brownstone at 640 Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street while Vanderbilt was constructing the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. But Frick wanted a more permanent home for his family—and for his ever-growing art collection.
Portrait of Mr. Frick in the West Gallery by Sir Gerald Kelly. Behind him hang two Old Master portraits: Velázquez’s King Philip IV of Spain and El Greco’s Vincenzo Anastagi. Both paintings remain on view in the West Gallery today.
Courtesy of the Frick CollectionBut where? One of the last pieces of prestigious real estate was found on Fifth Avenue stretching from 70th to 71st Street. Frick hired world-class talents to help him create his vision, starting with architect Thomas Hastings of the esteemed firm Carrère & Hastings, which had just completed the New York Public Library, still one of the most beautiful examples of Beaux Arts architecture in America. Henry Frick had an evolving eye for art and for architecture, and his taste had moved on from the dark, richly ornamented, densely layered Victorian aesthetic of his Pittsburgh home, Clayton.
Frick purchased Jean-Honoré Fragonard's 14-painting suite "The Progress of Love" from the estate of fellow Gilded Age tycoon J.P. Morgan.
Courtesy of the Frick Collection
The Fragonard Room is now one of the museum's signature attractions.
Joseph Coscia Jr.For 1 East 70th Street, Hastings designed an elegant, low-slung, three-story neoclassical building in Indiana limestone. Its quiet, refined facade lined with classic pilasters contrasted with other notable Gilded Age mansions, for instance Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s elaborate six-story French château-esque mansion at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, topped with turrets, dormers, and ornate chimneys. Hastings’ plan included a cavernous West Gallery where Henry Frick could hang his astounding art collection, which came to include works by Constable, Degas, Van Dyck, Fragonard, Gainsborough, Goya, El Greco, Manet, Rembrandt, Renoir, Titian, Turner, Velázquez, Vermeer, and Whistler. It was the largest private gallery space in New York at the time.
The velvet–lined West Gallery was the largest private gallery in New York when it was completed.
Courtesy of the Frick Collection
The newly renovated gallery holds works by Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and Velázquez.
Joseph Coscia Jr.For the interiors, Frick assigned the grand, soaring rooms of the first floor to Sir Charles Allom, the British architect and decorator who had been knighted by King George V for his redecoration work at Buckingham Palace. Despite his royal background, Frick reminded Allom to use restraint: “We desire a comfortable, well arranged home, simple, in good taste, and not ostentatious.” Although the rooms lined with marble and oak and elaborate painted panels by Fragonard and Boucher are not exactly “simple,” Allom’s interiors have an airy, light-filled, carefully edited clarity.
The grand staircase, seen through the East Vestibule, was closed off to the public when the house became a museum.
Courtesy of the Frick Collection
Visitors can now ascend the staircase to visit the newly opened second-floor galleries.
Joseph Coscia Jr.Fourteen rooms on the second and third floors, including bedrooms and guest rooms, were delegated to the first lady of American design, Elsie de Wolfe, who was known for her fresh, anti-Victorian decorating style. Shopping for fine antiques proved to be a lucrative project since she was paid a finder’s fee commission. Frick, ever the cool businessman, advised her to rein in the spending, writing on May 27, 1914, “I should think however that you might secure better prices. Take your time.” On other occasions, however, he bought freely. Granted 30 minutes with Frick to preview a Paris estate sale before his golf date, de Wolfe was surprised by the number of expensive pieces he quickly purchased, noting in her memoir, “I realized that in one short half-hour I had become what was tantamount to a rich woman.”
Adelaide Frick’s boudoir on the second floor was lined with painted panels by François Boucher.
Courtesy of the Frick Collection
The Boucher Room was moved to the first floor during the museum conversion, but is now back in its location upstairs.
Joseph Coscia Jr.Henry Frick, his wife Adelaide, and daughter Helen moved into the house with 27 servants in 1914, though Frick only lived in the house for five years, dying of ptomaine food poisoning and heart failure after a lobster luncheon in 1919 at age 69. In her book, The Henry Clay Frick Houses, Frick’s great-granddaughter Martha Frick Symington Sanger notes that in the last month of his life, he wandered the rooms carrying a blue quilt and sitting in the West Gallery looking at his paintings. In his will, Frick bequeathed the house and his art collection to the public. After wife Adelaide’s death in 1931, architect John Russell Pope converted the family house into a public institution, nearly doubling the building’s size. The Frick Collection opened to the public in 1935.
The second floor hall features a ceiling mural painted by Alden Twachtman, commissioned by Elsie de Wolfe.
Courtesy of the Frick Collection
A nearby hall with the same ceiling mural leads to the Boucher Anteroom.
Joseph Coscia Jr.Now, happily, a successful and sensitive five-year, $220 million restoration and expansion of The Frick Collection has been completed by Selldorf Architects and executive architect Beyer Blinder Belle. Thrillingly, the second floor bedrooms have been opened to the public for the first time, and new additions include an entry lobby, marble staircase, auditorium, cafe (coming in June), more exhibition space, and improved access and flow. Thankfully, the house remains as it was originally intended, offering a beautiful setting to savor the astonishing masterpieces, hung one after the other, that make up Mr. Frick’s continuing gift to the city of New York.
Henry Clay Frick's sumptuously wood-paneled bedroom.
Courtesy of the Frick Collection
The room has been turned into a new gallery, the Walnut Room.
COurtesy of the Frick collection
