Frick Art and Historical Center

Following their marriage in 1880, Henry and Adelaide Frick moved into and partially rebuilt the Italian villa that still constitutes the core of this mansion. In 1892, they commissioned Frederick Osterling to expand the house again. He transformed the two-story Italianate house into a four-story French Chateauesque mansion, but the result inside and out was more baronial than happy. Later additions are the limestone Renaissance Revival Frick Art Museum (1969–1970, Thomas C. Pratt for Pratt, Shaeffer and Slowik) and a Car and Carriage Museum displaying Frick's sumptuous vehicles and a history of western Pennslyvanian's love affair with the automobile.

More enchanting than the house are the grounds, with Frick's private greenhouse and the playhouse for his children. Immediately across Reynolds Street begin the several hundred forested acres of Frick's estate. In 1935, those acres became Frick Park, with John Russell Pope adding pavilions at the park entrances here and at the Forbes Avenue entrance. Currently a house museum, Clayton is one of the best of its type in the nation, less in artistic quality than in the obsessive retention of every article of clothing and its accompanying documentation.