The Frick Collection

The Frick Collection occupies a limestone mansion that was built as a private residence but designed from the start to eventually function as a public art gallery. Industrialist Henry Clay Frick commissioned the architects Carrère and Hastings to create this Beaux-Arts home with the specific instruction that it should be flexible enough to house his collection after he and his wife were gone. During his lifetime, the mansion served as a residence for the family on the second floor and a dedicated space for his Old Master paintings, while twenty-seven servants occupied rooms on the third floor. By the time it opened as a museum in nineteen thirty-five, the space had been carefully adapted to preserve the atmosphere of a private home while welcoming the public to view treasures like Vermeer and Rembrandt masterworks.