Inside The Frick Collection: The Upstairs Downstairs World of a Gilded Age Mansion

This week The Frick Collection will reopen its doors to the public after a renovation and restoration of nearly five years and a cost of $220 million dollars. Visitors will again see the elegant Beaux Arts mansion once occupied by Gilded Age industrialist Henry Clay Frick and his wife and daughter. They will also see the priceless collection of masterworks of art from the Renaissance through the 19th century, much of acquired by Frick himself. 

In this episode, a companion show to the Bowery Boys "House of Beauty: The Story of the Frick Collection", Carl talks with managing educator Caitlin Henningsen about her work researching the domestic staff who worked in the mansion, just who they were and what their roles in the household were. They also speak about how Frick thought about blending art with domestic space in several of his homes and what he wanted to achieve with this mansion before it became a museum after his death in 1919.  

Caitlin and Carl also discuss, thanks to extraordinary archival records,  how the Fricks entertained in a grand Gilded Age style in the very dining room visitors see today.   

Find PART ONE over at the Bowery Boys podcast House of Beauty: The Story of the Frick Collection