Henry Clay Frick House

The building you are approaching is the Henry Clay Frick House, a grand Beaux-Arts mansion that was completed in nineteen fourteen to serve as both a private home and an eventual public museum. Henry Clay Frick, a powerful industrialist who made his fortune in steel and coke, commissioned the firm of Carrère and Hastings to design this limestone residence on the site of the former Lenox Library. From the time it was built, Frick intended for his mansion to be a space where the public could one day study and appreciate his vast collection of Old Master paintings and decorative arts. He lived here for only five years before his death in nineteen nineteen, but his will ensured the property would transition from a private family home into the cultural institution known today as The Frick Collection.