by I love interesting historic homes, so of course we stopped to tour Clayton while in Pittsburgh. Clayton was the Victorian home of coke- (relating to coal, not drugs) and steel-magnate Henry Clay Frick and his family from 1882 to 1905, after which they relocated to New York City. The opulent home has 23 rooms, and was decorated to showcase the family’s wealth during the Gilded Age. I’m currently reading Steel: The Story of Pittsburgh’s Iron & Steel Industry, which brings this period vividly to life, and has lots about the doings of Frick (and others, of course), including how they lived so extravagantly while the immigrants toiling in their mines and factories lived in poverty. Clayton is the last remaining home of its kind in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, no interior pictures were allowed, so you’ll need to go to Google if you want to see some pictures (or just click here to let me Google it for you).
Next door to Clayton, daughter Helen Clay Frick opened the Frick Art Museum in 1970 to showcase her fine and decorative art collection, along with the paintings, sculptures, and porcelains that she inherited from her father. It is a small museum with some fine items, including French 18th-century, early Italian Renaissance, Renaissance and Baroque art, along with some extraordinary Chinese porcelains.
While we were there, the Frick Art Museum exhibition was From Stage to Page: 400 Years of Shakespeare in Print, which had all four of the first Shakespeare folios together for the first time. It was a treat to see these rare books printed in 1623, 1632, 1663 and 1685, respectively, especially the really egregious typo (below).
Also on the grounds of the Frick estate was a Greenhouse…with flowers…and if you know me, you know that’s gotta be its own post.
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