Description of the attraction
The Frick Collection is a small but very rich museum on the corner of 70th Street and Fifth Avenue. It was founded by a man who was cursed and hated during his lifetime for greed and cruelty. The same man ran several charitable foundations and financed a free hospital. But in America's memory, he remained a symbol of greed and the absence of moral barriers.
Henry Clay Frick was born into an impoverished family and vowed to be a millionaire by the age of thirty. In 1871 he formed a small partnership for the production of coke. Nine years later, when Frick was thirty, the company controlled 80 percent of Pennsylvania's coal production. Success was achieved with harsh methods: Frick suppressed the strike of his workers with the help of hundreds of armed detectives from the Pinkerton Agency, nine strikers were killed.
Freak was a man of rare luck. In 1892, anarchist Alexander Berkman burst into his office, seeking to avenge the dead. Berkman shot at point-blank range, tried to finish off Frick with a dagger. A week later, the wounded man was sitting in his office again. Ten years later, the tycoon was vacationing in the Alps, his wife sprained her leg, the flight to the States had to be returned, and the Titanic left without them.
In 1914, Frick built a mansion in Manhattan to a design by Thomas Hastings. In those days, almost every building on Fifth Avenue above 59th Street was either a mansion, a private club, or a posh hotel. But even in this setting, Frick's home stood out for its luxury - with a private front garden and a magnificent courtyard. The magnate's collection of paintings by old masters and antique furniture is located here. After the death of Frick's widow Adelaide, the building was opened to the public as a museum.
The collection of the highest quality is located in six galleries of the mansion: these are canvases by famous European artists, sculpture, French furniture, Limoges enamels, oriental carpets. Exhibited here are El Greco (Saint Jerome), Jan Vermeer (three canvases, including The Hostess and the Maid Holding a Letter), Giovanni Bellini (The Ecstasy of Saint Francis), Hans Holbein the Younger (Portrait of Thomas More) … The small museum houses works by Agnolo di Cosimo, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Diego Velazquez, Rembrandt, Francisco Goya and other great masters.
The collection here numbers 1,100 masterpieces, and none of them is younger than the era of French impressionism. The interiors of the mansion are more reminiscent of an old castle: furniture of the 16th century, frescoes, marble fireplaces. All exhibits, even fragile ones, are located so that it is convenient to examine them. For the same reason, children under ten are not allowed into the museum: you never know.
