Henry Clay Frick Biography
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Henry Clay Frick (December 19, 1849 –
December 2, 1919) was an American industrialist and art patron.
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Personal history
Frick was born on 19 December 1849 in West
Overton, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, in the Appalachians.
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.
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.
The 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
Anarchist Alexander Berkman decided to kill
Henry Clay Frick because of Frick's calling in Pinkerton detectives who
killed several striking miners. Berkman's lover, Emma Goldman, decided
to prostitute herself to earn the money needed to arm him, but was sent
home untouched by her first client with the $10 that was used to
purchase the gun. 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, though Berkman and Goldman were able to
use the resultant publicity to become anarchist spokespeople. They were
deported to Russia in 1919. Berkman committed suicide in 1936.
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 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.
****
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URL of Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Clay_Frick
Date Article Copied:
March 17, 2006
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