Henry Clay Frick was an American industrialist, financier, union-buster,
and art patron. He founded the H. C. Frick & Company coke manufacturing
company, was chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company, and played a major role
in the formation of the giant U.S. Steel steel manufacturing concern. He also
financed the construction of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading
Company, and owned extensive real estate holdings in Pittsburgh and throughout
the state of Pennsylvania. He later built the historic neoclassical Frick
Mansion and at his death donated his extensive collection of old master
paintings and fine furniture to create the celebrated Frick Collection and art
museum. Early life
Frick was born in West Overton, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in
the United States, a grandson of Abraham Overholt, the owner of the prosperous
Overholt Whiskey distillery. Frick's father, John W. Frick, was unsuccessful
in business pursuits. Henry Clay Frick attended Otterbein College for one year,
but did not graduate. In 1871, at 21 years old, 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, and vowed to be a millionaire by the age of thirty.
The company was called Frick Coke Company.
Thanks to loans from the family of lifelong friend Andrew W. Mellon, by
1880, Frick bought out the partnership. The company was renamed H. C. Frick &
Company, employed 1,000 workers and controlled 80 percent of the coal output
in Pennsylvania, operating coal mines in Washington and Fayette counties, where
he also operated banks of beehive coke ovens. Some of the brick structures are
still visible in Fayette County. H. C. Frick and Andrew Carnegie
Shortly after marrying Adelaide Howard Childs, in 1881, Frick met Andrew
Carnegie in New York City while the Fricks were on their honeymoon. This
meeting resulted in a partnership between H. C. Frick & 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. Carnegie made multiple attempts
to force Frick out of the company they had created by making it appear that the
company had nowhere left to go and that it was time for Frick to retire. Despite
the contributions Frick had made towards Andrew Carnegie's fortune, Carnegie
disregarded him in many executive decisions including finances.
The Johnstown Flood At the suggestion of his friend Benjamin
Ruff, Frick helped to found the exclusive South Fork Fishing and Hunting
Club high above Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The charter members of the South Fork
Fishing and Hunting Club were Benjamin Ruff; T. H. Sweat, Charles J. Clarke,
Thomas Clark, Walter F. Fundenberg, Howard Hartley, Henry C. Yeager, J. B.
White, Henry Clay Frick, E. A. Meyers, C. C. Hussey, D. R. Ewer, C. A.
Carpenter, W. L. Dunn, W. L. McClintock, and A. V. Holmes and Andrew Carnegie.
The sixty-odd club members were the leading business tycoons of Western
Pennsylvania, and included among their number Frick’s best friend, Andrew
Mellon, his attorneys Philander Knox and James Hay Reed, as well as Frick's
occasional business partner Andrew Carnegie. The club members made
inadequate repairs to what was at that time the world's largest earthen dam,
behind which formed a private lake called Lake Conemaugh. Less than 20
miles downstream from the dam sat the city of Johnstown. Cambria Iron Company
operated a large iron and steel work in Johnstown and its owner, Daniel J.
Morrell, was concerned about the safety of the dam and the thoroughness of
repairs made to it. Morrell had even sent his own engineer to inspect the
site but little was done in the long run to satisfy his concerns and the matter
was largely dropped after Morrell's death in the mid-1880s.
Poor maintenance, unusually high snowmelt and heavy spring rains combined
to cause the dam to give way on May 31, 1889, resulting in the Johnstown Flood.
When word of the dam's failure was telegraphed to Pittsburgh, Frick and
other members of the club gathered to form the Pittsburgh Relief Committee for
assistance to the flood victims, as well as determining never to speak publicly
about the club or the flood. This strategy was a success, and Knox and
Reed were able to fend off all lawsuits that would have placed blame upon the
club’s members. Although Cambria Iron's facilities were heavily damaged, they
returned to full production within a year and a half.
Homestead strike Frick and Carnegie's partnership was
strained over actions taken in response to the Homestead Steel Strike, an 1892
labor strike at the Homestead Works of the Carnegie Steel Company, called by
the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. At Homestead, striking
workers, some of whom were armed, had locked the company staff out of the
factory and surrounded it with pickets. Frick was known for his 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." With the
mill ringed by striking workers, Pinkerton agents planned to access the
plant grounds from the river. Three hundred Pinkerton detectives assembled
on the Davis Island Dam on the Ohio River about five miles below Pittsburgh
at 10:30 p.m. on the night of July 5, 1892. They were given Winchester rifles,
placed on two specially-equipped barges and towed upriver with the object of
removing the workers by force. Upon their landing, a large mêlée between
workers and Pinkerton detectives ensued. Ten men were killed, nine of them
workers, and there were seventy injuries. The Pinkerton agents were
thrown back, and the riot was ultimately quelled only by the intervention of
8,000 armed state militia under the command of Major General George R.
Snowden. During the confrontation Frick issued an ultimatum to Homestead
workers, which restated his refusal to speak with union representatives and
threatened to have striking workers evicted from their homes.
Among working-class Americans, Frick's actions against the strikers were
condemned as excessive, and he soon became a target of even more union
organizers. Because of this strike, some had thought that he is depicted as the
"rich man" in Maxo Vanka's murals in St. Nicholas Croatian Church, but the
Society to Preserve the Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanka says it depicts Andrew
Mellon. Assassination attempt
Alexander Berkman plotted to murder Frick. On July 23, 1892, Berkman, armed
with a revolver and a sharpened steel file, entered Frick's office in downtown
Pittsburgh. Frick, realizing what was happening,
attempted to rise from his chair while Berkman pulled a revolver and fired at
nearly point-blank range. The bullet hit Frick in the left earlobe, penetrated
his neck near the base of the skull, and lodged in his back. The impact knocked
Frick down, and Berkman fired again, striking Frick for a second time in the
neck and causing him to bleed extensively. Carnegie Steel vice
president John George Alexander Leishman, who was with Frick, was then
able to grab Berkman’s arm and prevented a third shot, probably saving Frick's
life. Frick was seriously wounded, but rose
and tackled his assailant. All three men crashed to the floor, where Berkman
managed to stab Frick four times in the leg with the pointed steel file before
finally being subdued by other employees, who had rushed into the
office. Frick was back at work in a week;
Berkman was charged and found guilty of attempted murder. Berkman's actions in
planning the assassination clearly indicated a premeditated intent to kill,
and he was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Negative publicity from the
attempted assassination resulted in the collapse of the strike. Approximately
2,500 men lost their jobs, and most of the workers who stayed had their wages
halved. Private life
Frick married Adelaide Howard Childs of Pittsburgh on December 15, 1881. They
had four children: Childs Frick, Martha Howard Frick, Helen Clay Frick and Henry
Clay Frick, Jr.. In 1882, after the formation of the partnership with Andrew
Carnegie, Frick and his wife bought a home they eventually called Clayton, an
estate in Pittsburgh's East End. They moved into the home in early 1883. The
Frick children were born in Pittsburgh and were raised at Clayton. Two of them,
Henry, Jr. and Martha, died in infancy or childhood.
In 1904, he built Eagle Rock, a summer estate at Prides Crossing in Beverly,
Massachusetts on Boston's fashionable North Shore. The 104-room mansion
designed by Little & Browne would be razed in 1969.
Frick was a fervent art collector whose wealth allowed him to accumulate a large
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, and served on many corporate boards, which brought him considerable
opportunity to continue his lifelong business interests.
For example, as a board member of the Equitable Life Insurance Company, Frick
attempted the removal of James Hazen Hyde from the United States to France by
seeking an appointment for him to become United States Ambassador to France.
Frick had engaged a similar stratagem when orchestrating the ouster of the man
who had saved his life, John George Alexander Leishman, from the presidency
of Carnegie Steel a decade beforehand. In that instance, Leishman had chosen to
accept the post as ambassador to Switzerland. Hyde, however, rebuffed
Frick's plan. He did, however, move to France, where he served as an ambulance
driver during World War I and lived until the outbreak of World War II.
The Frick Collection is home to one of the finest collections of European
paintings in the United States. It contains many works of art dating from
the pre-Renaissance up to the post-Impressionist eras, but in no
logical or chronological order. It includes several very large paintings by
J. M. W. Turner and John Constable. In addition to paintings, it also contains
an exhibition of carpets, porcelain, sculptures, and period furniture. Frick
continued to live at both his New York mansion and at Clayton until his death.
Frick and his wife Adelaide had booked tickets to travel back to New York on
the inaugural trip of the Titanic in 1912, along with J.P. Morgan. The couple
canceled their trip after Adelaide sprained her ankle in Italy and missed
the disastrous voyage. Death
Henry Clay Frick died of a heart attack on December 2, 1919, weeks before his
70th birthday. He was buried in Pittsburgh's Homewood Cemetery.
Legacy Frick left a will in which he bequeathed
150 acres of undeveloped land to the City of Pittsburgh for use as a public
park, together with 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.
Following the death of Adelaide Howard Childs Frick in 1931, the Frick
Collection was opened to the public as a museum in 1935.
Many years after her father's death, Helen Clay Frick returned to Clayton in
1981, and lived there until her death in 1984. After extensive restoration, this
property was also opened to the public in 1990 as the Frick Art & Historical
Center. Frick was elected an honorary member of
the Alpha Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity at the New
England Conservatory of Music on October 19, 1917.
See also Westmoreland, his private railroad car.
"Bloody Battles" episode of The Men Who Built America
References Bibliography
Falk, Candace; Pateman, Barry; and Moran, Jessica M. Emma Goldman: A
Documentary History of the American Years. Berkeley, Calif.: University of
California Press, 2003. "Founded His Fortune in the Panic of
1873." The New York Times. December 3, 1919.
"Henry C. Frick Dies." The New York Times. December 3, 1919.
Krause, Paul. The Battle for Homestead, 1890–1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel.
Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992.
Petrucelli, Alan W. "A Fresh Look: Viewing Vanka Murals a Religious
Experience." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. July 14, 2008.
Skrabec, Quentin R. Henry Clay Frick: The Life of the Perfect Capitalist.
Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2010. Smith, Roberta. "Change Arrives on
Tiptoes at the Frick Mansion." The New York Times. August 28, 2008.
Standiford, Les. Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and
the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America. New York: Crown Publishers,
2005. Tuchman, Barbara. The Proud Tower: A
Portrait of the World Before the War: 1890-1914. The Macmillan Company. ISBN
0333306465. Further reading
Apfelt, Brian. The Corporation: 100 Years of the United States Steel Corp.
Harvey, George. Henry Clay Frick: The Man. , an authorized biography by a
close friend online Hessen, Robert. Steel Titan: The Life of
Charles M. Schwab Sanger, Martha Frick Symington. Henry
Clay Frick: An Intimate Portrait. New York: Abbeville Press, 1998.
Sanger, Martha Frick Symington. The Henry Clay Frick Houses: Architecture,
Interiors, Landscapes in the Golden Era. New York: Monacelli Press, 2001.
Warren, Kenneth. Triumphant Capitalism: Henry Clay Frick and the Industrial
Transformation of America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996;
the standard scholarly biography. Warren, Kenneth. "The Business Career of
Henry Clay Frick," Pittsburgh History 73: 4-15;
External links Official Frick Collection Website
The Frick Art & Historical Center and Clayton
Helen Clay Frick Foundation Archives Documenting the Gilded Age: New York
City Exhibitions at the Turn of the 20th Century A New York Art Resources
Consortium project. Exhibition catalog of paintings from the collection of Mr.
Henry C. Frick, 1908, and 2 letters. Texts on Wikisource:
"Frick, Henry Clay". Encyclopædia Britannica. 1922.
"Frick, Henry Clay". The Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1918.
"Frick, Henry Clay". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900.
[[Category:Gilded age]