Henry Clay Frick

Henry Clay Frick (December 19, 1849 – December 2, 1919) was an American industrialist, financier, and art patron. He founded the H. C. Frick & Company coke manufacturing company, and later became chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company. Frick's management of Carnegie Steel was characterized by vehement opposition to unions, a trait reflected most notably by his violent suppression of the Homestead Strike. In the later years of his career as an industrialist, he was instrumental in the founding of U.S. Steel, which became the world's largest steel manufacturer.

In his life outside of the steel industry, Frick was a prominent investor who had extensive real estate holdings in Pittsburgh and throughout the state of Pennsylvania. As a founding member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, he was also in large part responsible for the alterations to the South Fork Dam that caused its failure, thereby leading to the catastrophic Johnstown Flood.

After he retired from business, Frick oversaw the construction of the Frick Mansion in Manhattan (now designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark). He bequeathed his extensive collection of old master paintings and fine furniture to create the Frick Collection art museum.

Early life

Frick was born in West Overton, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in the United States, a grandson of Abraham Overholt (Oberholzer), the owner of the prosperous Overholt Whiskey distillery. His father was of Swiss ancestry; his mother was of German ancestry. 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 Mellon, by 1880, Frick bought out the partnership. The company, renamed H. C. Frick & Company, ultimately employed 1,000 workers and controlled 80 percent of the coal output in Pennsylvania, in 1881, Frick met Andrew Carnegie in New York City while the Fricks were on their honeymoon. This introduction would lead to a partnership between H. C. Frick & Company and what became the Carnegie Steel Company, until they were absorbed into United States Steel. This partnership ensured that Carnegie's steel mills had adequate supplies of coke. Frick, who was an effective manager, became chairman of the company. After the deadly Homestead strike, Frick and Carnegie came into conflict. Frick tried to sell the company to speculators. Carnegie made multiple attempts to force Frick out of the company without adequate compensation. Despite the contributions Frick had made towards Andrew Carnegie's fortune, Carnegie disregarded him in many executive decisions including finances. After Frick sued, they settled.

The Johnstown Flood

At the suggestion of his friend Benjamin Ruff, Frick and 15 other men founded the exclusive South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club high above Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

The club grew to more than 60 members, including leading business tycoons of western Pennsylvania. Among them were Frick's best friend Andrew Mellon; his attorneys Philander Knox and James Hay Reed; and his 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 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.

The Club fatally lowered the dam by between . Poor repairs and maintenance, unusually high snow melt, and heavy spring rains combined to cause the dam to give way on May 31, 1889, resulting in the Johnstown Flood. A screen placed across the spillway by the club to prevent fish from escaping also partly blocked the main spillway. 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. With a volumetric flow rate that temporarily equalled that of the Mississippi River, the flood killed 2,208 people and caused US$17 million of damage (about $450 million in 2015 dollars).

The American Society of Civil Engineers launched an investigation of the South Fork Dam breach immediately after the flood. However, the report was delayed, subverted, and whitewashed, and finally released two years after the disaster. A detailed discussion of what happened during the ASCE investigation, its participating engineers, and the science behind the 1889 flood was published in 2018.

Old Overholt whiskey

In 1881, Frick, already wealthy, took control of his grandfather's whiskey company, Old Overholt. Frick split ownership with Andrew Mellon and Charles W. Mauck; each owned one-third of the company. Upon Frick's death in 1919, he left his share of the company to Mellon. The Pinkerton agents were thrown back, and ultimately they surrendered and left town.

At Frick's request, the governor sent a force of 8,000 armed state militia under the command of Major General George R. Snowden,

Assassination attempt

thumb|Berkman's attempt to assassinate Frick, as illustrated by W. P. Snyder in 1892, originally published in [[Harper's Weekly.]]

In 1892, during the Homestead strike, anarchist Alexander Berkman attempted to assassinate Frick. On July 23, Berkman, armed with a revolver and a sharpened steel file, entered Frick's office in downtown Pittsburgh. 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 and a carpenter, who had rushed into the office.

Frick was back at work within 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.

Private life

thumb|right|Clayton

thumb|right|Eagle Rock in 1913

thumb|right|The [[Henry Clay Frick House, 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.

thumb|left|Henry Clay Frick and Helen Frick, 1910, [[Edmund C. Tarbell]]

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

thumb|right|170px|[[Frick Park gate in the Point Breeze neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA]]

Frick left a will in which he bequeathed 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 .

Many years after her father's death, Helen Clay Frick returned to Clayton in 1981, and lived there until her death in 1984.

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. A new chemistry building, completed in 2010, bears the Frick Chemistry Laboratory name in honor of his 1919 bequest.

Henry Clay Frick Business Records (Archives)

The Henry Clay Frick archive of business records consisted of the documents regarding the business and financial dealings from 1849 to 1919. These original documents record the evolution of the period of American steel and coal industrial growth. Documentation includes first business activities, first coal firm, H.C. Frick & Company, to the formation of United States Steel Corporation on March 2, 1901. Correspondence sent and received from prominent businessmen such as Andrew Carnegie, Charles Schwab, Andrew Mellon, Henry Oliver, H. H. Rogers, Henry Phipps, and J. P. Morgan are part of the collection. Much of the collection is available as digitized and openly accessible. Most of the collection is from 1881 to 1914, and is relevant to the history of the Pittsburgh region.

The archive of Frick's great-grandfather, Henry Overholt (1739–1813), is also housed at the Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh Library System, University of Pittsburgh.

In popular culture

A portrayal of Frick is featured in the "Bloody Battles" episode of The Men Who Built America, History Channel's 2012 miniseries docudrama.

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, NC: McFarland & Co., 2010.

External links

Official Frick Collection Website
The Frick Art & Historical Center and Clayton
Helen Clay Frick Foundation Archives
Finding Aid for the Adelaide H.C. Frick Papers, 1874-1951
Documenting the Gilded Age: New York City Exhibitions at the Turn of the 20th Century A New York Art Resources Consortium project.