Of all the museums in New York City, the Frick Collection is the glistening jewel. Housed in a 1914 limestone mansion, it’s a private home filled with old master paintings and decorative arts; but now for the first time, visitors can climb the grand staircase up to the second floor and step inside the sumptuous private bedrooms of the storied Frick family.
Photography by Joseph Coscia Jr.
“The second-floor rooms, now functioning as galleries, are smaller and more intimate compared to the grand rooms on the first floor,” explains the museum’s John Updike Curator Aimee Ng. “These spaces were once the private areas — bedrooms and sitting rooms — of the Frick family. The domestic scale of these second-floor rooms, which includes about 10 rooms and several passageways, creates an ideal atmosphere for engaging with the collection.”
Henry Clay Frick was an early 1900s industrialist who lived in the Fifth Avenue mansion with his wife, Adelaide, and daughter, Helen. In April, Selldorf Architects completed the most comprehensive upgrade of the museum in nearly 90 years — giving the public a rare glimpse into the grand style of this architectural triumph.
One of the highlights is an enchanting ceiling mural along the second-floor corridor. Contrasted with the otherwise formal interiors, the hand-painted work by John Alden Twachtman offers a delightfully lighthearted touch. “The cerulean sky and suggested landscape are filled with monkeys dressed in Chinese costumes, playfully engaging in human activities — a nod to the French Rococo traditions of singeries and chinoiseries,” reveals Ng. “One particularly charming detail is a monkey lighting the candles of a floating lantern just before the entrance to Adelaide’s bedroom suite.”
The woman who commissioned this mural was Elsie de Wolfe, who is considered America’s first interior decorator. Her simplified, lighter designs replaced the heavy Victorian decor of the time. Turns out, she was just starting her career when Frick was building his estate — so she sent him a rather bold pitch. “In 1914, she wrote to Mr. Frick, who had initially hired a team of all men to decorate his new home,” Ng points out. “She expressed her eagerness to decorate ‘even one room’ and highlighted her expertise in detail and the comfort of women’s spaces — something she claimed ‘no mere man’ could fully understand.”
The pitch worked, and de Wolfe went on to create the iconic Boucher Boudoir, a confection of 18th-century French exuberance. Painted by François Boucher, it includes eight cherub-laden panels depicting the arts and sciences. Previously displayed on the museum’s main floor, the room has been painstakingly returned to its original location. “The Boucher Room was the private boudoir — or sitting room — of Mrs. Frick,” Ng says. “Located next to her bedroom, she used it for various activities. I love the whole room as an ensemble, down to its corner location with windows overlooking Central Park and 70th Street.”
Another highlight is the beloved breakfast room, where family members gathered for their first meal of the day. The suite’s east-facing windows let in the glistening morning light, infusing the space with a warm glow. And as the kitchen was located on the lower level, a waiter would bring the coffee and treats up to the second-floor room, where the family could savor these delights in private.
Finally, to celebrate all this splendor, the exhibition Vermeer’s Love Letters is on view this summer. The Frick’s masterpiece Vermeer’s “Mistress and Maid” will be united with two special loans: “The Love Letter” from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and “Woman Writing a Letter” from the National Gallery of Ireland. Displayed in a single gallery, the three works will appear together for first time — a fitting love letter to this newly refurbished Gilded-Age museum.
