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Henry Clay Frick

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"HENRY CLAY FRICK (1849-1919), American manufacturer and philanthropist, was born at West Overton, 0., June 17 1849. As a boy he was a clerk for his grandfather who was a distiller and flour merchant; but he early became interested in the coke business. In 1871 he organized the firm of Frick & Co., which ultimately acquired large coal deposits and ran 12,000 coke ovens. He was chairman of the board of Carnegie Bros., from 1889 to 1892, and in the latter year, during the Homestead strike, was shot and stabbed by Alexander Berkman, an anarchist. He was a director of the Pennsylvania, the Santa Fe, and other railways, and of the U.S. Steel Corporation. He died in New York Dec. 2 1919.

To his family and friends he left $25,000,000, estimated at the time to be one-sixth of his estate. To his daughter he left about $6,500,000 to be expended in educational and charitable work. To the city of Pittsburgh he left land for a park (its value being estimated at $500,000), together with endowment of $2,000,000. His New York mansion, with its collection of paintings, bronzes, and enamels, he bequeathed to the city on the death of his wife; and he added an endowment of $15,000,000 for the support of this " Frick Art Collection." He divided his residuary estate into Too equal parts, each of a tentative value of $500,000. One share was left to many Pennsylvania hospitals and charitable homes, three shares to the Lying-in Hospital (New York), ten shares to the Mercy Hospital (Pittsburgh), ten shares to the Frick Educational Fund, ten shares to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ten shares to Harvard University and thirty shares to Princeton University. The value of his New York mansion and its art collection was estimated, in 1920, to be $50,000,000. Among the chief treasures are the Fragonard panels, purchased from the Morgan collection in 1915 for $1,250,000, Bellini's " St. Francis in the Desert " (costing $250,000), Velasquez's " Philip IV. " (costing $400,000), Van Dyck's " Paola Adorno " (costing $400,000), Rembrandt's " Portrait of Himself," Gainsborough's " The Mall " (costing $300,000), and the same artist's " The Hon. Anna Duncan " (costing $400,000). Other paintings are fine examples of Titian, Vermeer, Frans Hals, Ruysdael, Cuyp, Rubens, El Greco, Goya, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Millet, Raeburn, Reynolds, Romney and Turner.