Inside the renovated Frick museum are intimate remnants of the family (and servants) who lived there
When industrialist Henry Clay Frick commissioned the architectural firm Carrère and Hastings to design his Fifth Avenue mansion in 1912, he had more in mind than building an elegant home where he, his wife, and his adult daughter could live. (Below, in 1915)
Frick also planned for his house to one day be a museum. His three-story, Beaux-Arts beauty spanning East 70th and 71st Streets would eventually be open to the public to view his vast art collection of Old Masters, statuary, bronzes, porcelains, and many more treasures.
Frick didn’t have much time to enjoy his Fifth Avenue showpiece. Five years after moving into the house in 1914 from his residence on Fifth Avenue and 51st Street (a former Vanderbilt mansion), he died of a heart attack a few weeks before his 70th birthday. (Below, with his daughter in 1910)
Almost immediately, this limestone mansion began its transformation into a jewel box of a museum.
After the 1931 death of Frick’s wife, Adelaide, the upstairs living quarters were cordoned off and made into staff-only offices. Other traces of the family home were removed or blocked off from the public (like the basement bowling alley) before the Frick Collection opened in 1935.
Now, 90 years later, the Frick has undergone a magnificent renovation. Completed earlier this month, the renovation preserved much of the intimacy of the museum galleries but “created new spaces for the display of art, conservation, education, and programs, while improving amenities and overall accessibility,” according to the Frick website.
The museum’s holdings have doubled since Frick’s death, and many exquisite treasures are on view. For admirers of New York City’s Gilded Age, the renovation offers a deeper peek into what life was like inside the stunning home of one of America’s richest men.
No longer roped off, the carved marble staircase (above) leads you to the second-floor family quarters. There, the breakfast room (with appropriate east-facing windows) and Adelaide’s sitting room have their original artwork reinstated as the family decorated it.
Over the fireplace in Henry Frick’s wood-paneled bedroom, where he spoke his last words to his butler before he died, is a painting he chose.
George Romney’s “Lady Hamilton, as ‘Nature'” is a captivating portrait from 1782 (above), and its place on the mantelpiece speaks to its importance to Frick.
Daughter Helen Clay Frick’s bedroom contains early Italian Renaissance paintings she “chose and loved,” according to a March 2025 New York Times review of the renovation. Helen was instrumental in cataloguing her father’s art and founding the Frick Art Research Library in 1920.
And in the downstairs West Gallery (above), a curious artifact remains partly obscured under J.M.W. Turner’s 1826 landscape painting “Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet-Boat: Evening.”
It’s a row of servant call buttons. Each separate button summoned a specific servant: the butler, housekeeper, valet, pantry, or secretary whenever their services were needed.
There were certainly several servants to choose from. The Frick mansion was home to 27 servants, according to a 2000 New York Times story that examined the 1915 census, and these men and women shared living space on the third floor and basement.
The list of servants would have been pretty normal for the era, though the transformation from huge stand-alone mansions to apartment living would soon reduce the need for wealthy New Yorkers to employ so many people.
The servants “included first and second butlers; first, second and third footmen; first, second, third and fourth chambermaids; a chef; a second cook; two vegetable cooks; three laundresses; and a ”servants’ hall girl,” per the Times article. The call buttons that summoned them were discreet, just like the servants who ran the household.
Come to the Frick Collection to see the art and architectural loveliness of the gallery spaces, including the newly opened second-floor family rooms. But don’t forget to note these more utilitarian call buttons, which the new renovation graciously leaves on display.
[Top image: MCNY, X2010.7.2.25060; second image: by Edmund Charles Tarbell, 1910; third and fifth images: Mitch Case via Frick Collection; fourth image: Frick Collection; sixth image: MCNY, X2010.7.2.25056]
