Henry Clay Frick

Henry Clay Frick (December 19, 1849 – December 2, 1919) was an American industrialist and art patron.

Personal history

Frick was born on 19 December, 1849 in West Overton, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.

December 15, 1881: He married Adelaide Howard Childs (1859-1931)
1883: His son Childs Frick was born.
1885: His daughter Martha Frick was born. She dies in 1891.
1888: His daughter Helen Clay Frick was born.
July 23, 1892: He was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt.
1892: His son Henry Clay Frick, Jr. was born. He died shortly after birth.
December 2, 1919: Frick dies in New York City.

Early years

At twenty-one, Frick joined two cousins and a friend in a small partnership, using a beehive oven to turn coal into coke, for use in steel manufacturing. By 1880, Frick bought out the partnership. The company was renamed H.C. Frick and Company, and employed 1000 workers. Frick was a millionaire by the age of thirty.

Frick and Andrew Carnegie

Shortly after marrying his wife in 1881, Frick met Andrew Carnegie in New York City. This meeting resulted in a partnership between H.C. Frick and Company and Carnegie Steel Company, and was the predecessor to United States Steel. This partnership ensured that Carnegie's steel mills had adequate supplies of coke. Frick became chairman of the company.

Homestead strike

Frick and Carnegie's partnership came to an end over Frick's aggressive anti-labor policies, beginning with actions taken in response to the Homestead Steel Strike, an 1892 labor strike at the Homestead Works of the Carnegie Steel Company. Frick was known for his ruthless anti-union policy and as negotiations were still taking place he ordered the construction of a solid board fence topped with barbed wire around mill property. The workers dubbed the newly fortified mill "Fort Frick." Frick's forcible repression of the strike, using a small army of Pinkertons, resulted in several deaths and was ultimately quelled by the additional action of 8,000 militia. Frick's actions against the strikers brought him immense negative publicity.

Assassination attempt

Russian-born anarchist Alexander Berkman decided to kill Frick because of Frick's calling in Pinkerton detectives who killed several strikers. On July 23, 1892, Berkman entered Frick's office in downtown Pittsburgh and shot him twice in the neck, with a third shot missing him. Wrestled to the ground by the combined efforts of Frick and his chief aide John Leishman, Berkman stabbed Frick twice with a poisoned dirk-knife before the police entered, guns in hand. Frick yelled, "Don't shoot! Don't kill him! The law will punish him." Frick was back at work in a week; Berkman served fourteen years in prison and was pardoned in 1906. The attempted assassination had no effect on labor conditions at Homestead Works, although Berkman and fellow anarchist Emma Goldman were able to use the resultant publicity to become anarchist spokespeople. As a result of the Palmer Raids of 1919, they were deported to Bolshevik Russia ostensibly for obstructing the draft; Berkman committed suicide in 1936 in France.

Later career

Frick resigned from the Carnegie Steel Company, and, in 1900, formed the St. Clair Steel Company. After Carnegie had sold his interest in the Carnegie Steel Company, Frick helped form the United States Steel Corporation. He also accumulated real estate and construction interests, including the first steel-frame skyscraper.

Private life

In 1882, after the formation of the partnership with Andrew Carnegie, the Fricks bought Clayton, an estate in Pittsburgh. They moved in 1883. The Frick children were born in Pittsburgh and were raised at Clayton.

Frick was an avid art collector whose significant wealth allowed him to accumulate a significant art collection. By 1905, Henry Clay Frick's business, social, and artistic interests had shifted from Pittsburgh to New York. He took his art collection with him to New York. In 1910 Frick purchased property at Fifth Avenue and 70th Street to construct a mansion now known as The Frick Collection. To this day, the Frick Collection is home to one of the finest collection of European paintings in the United States. It contains many works of art dating from the pre-Renaissance up to the post-Impressionist eras. Besides paintings, it also contains a beautiful exhibiton of carpets, porcelain, sculptures, and fine furniture; and is a wonderful example of design and architecture. Frick lived there alone until his death in 1919. The Frick Collection was opened to the public as a museum in 1935.

At his death, he bequethed 150 acres of undeveloped land to the City of Pittsburgh for use as a public park. He provided a $2 million trust fund to assist with the maintenance of the park. Frick Park opened in 1927. Between 1919 and 1942, money from the trust fund was used to enlarge the park, increasing its size to almost 600 acres.

Many years after her father's death, Helen Clay Frick returned to the Clayton in 1981 and lived there until her death in 1984. After extensive restoration, this property was also opened to the public in 1990.

External links

1849 births | 1919 deaths | Andrew Carnegie | People from Pittsburgh | Steel magnates