, which houses the
Frick Collection Frick married Adelaide Howard Childs of Pittsburgh on December 15, 1881. They had four children:
Childs Frick (born March 12, 1883), Martha Howard Frick (born August 9, 1885),
Helen Clay Frick (born September 3, 1888) and Henry Clay Frick Jr. (born July 8, 1892). 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 was razed in 1969. Frick was a fervent art collector whose wealth allowed him to accumulate a large collection. By 1905, Frick's business, social and artistic interests had shifted from Pittsburgh to New York City. He took his art collection with him to New York, rented the
William H. Vanderbilt House, and served on many corporate boards. For example, as a board member of the Equitable Life Insurance Company, Frick attempted the removal of
James Hazen Hyde (the founder's only son and heir) 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 world. It contains many works of art dating from the early
Renaissance up to the
Impressionist era, displayed at the
Henry Clay Frick House (built in 1913) in no logical or chronological order. Highlights include many important Renaissance and Baroque paintings. It also has an extensive collection of English portraits and
Rococo works. It has two large paintings by
J. M. W. Turner and one by
John Constable, as well as landscapes from the Barbizon school. In addition to paintings, the collection also features carpets, porcelain, sculptures, and period furniture. Frick purchased the
Westmoreland, a
private railroad car, from the
Pullman Company in 1910. The car cost nearly $40,000, and featured a kitchen, pantry, dining room, servant's quarters, two staterooms, and a lavatory. Frick frequently used the car for travel between his residences in New York City, Pittsburgh, and
Prides Crossing, Massachusetts, as well for trips to places such as
Palm Beach, Florida, and
Aiken, South Carolina. The car remained in the Frick family until it was scrapped by
Helen Clay Frick in 1965. Photographs of family and friends travelling on the
Westmoreland form part of the Frick archive, as do the original construction plans and upholstery fabric samples. Frick and his wife, Adelaide, had booked tickets to travel back to New York on the maiden voyage of the
RMS Titanic in 1912, along with
J. P. Morgan. But the couple canceled their trip after Adelaide sprained her ankle in Italy—and, fortuitously, missed the catastrophic crossing. Frick died of a heart attack on December 2, 1919, at the age of 69. He was buried in Pittsburgh's
Homewood Cemetery. ==Legacy==