Reading List: The Frick Buildings Through Time

This spring, The Frick Collection and Frick Art Research Library completed a multi-year renovation and enhancement project, reopening our galleries and reading room to great fanfare on April 17. In celebration, the library has put together a list of print and digital resources that showcase the evolution of the Frick’s historic buildings, from a private mansion to the public institution visitors enjoy today. Items on the list below are available to explore online or in our reading room—open weekdays free of charge, with no reservations required.

Plus, look out for the forthcoming release of two new publications that further document how a Fifth Avenue home became a world-renowned museum and center for scholarship: A Design for Continuity and Change: The Frick Collection, which details the 2021–25 renovation project designed by Selldorf Architects, and The Frick Collection: The Historic Interiors of One East Seventieth Street, which presents a room-by-room history of spaces in the Frick mansion.

1. Building The Frick Collection: An Introduction to the House and Its Collections

By Colin B. Bailey (2006)

Delve into a comprehensive introduction to the building of The Frick Collection as a physical place and a collection of art. This volume, by a former director of the Frick, extensively traces the original design of the 1914 Carrère and Hastings mansion and its 1935 transformation into a museum by John Russell Pope, as well as Pope’s design of the adjacent Frick Art Research Library (formerly the Frick Art Reference Library). The author also weaves the collecting tastes of Henry Clay Frick and his daughter Helen—the library’s founder and chair of the museum’s Acquisitions Committee in its early years—throughout his narrative.

2. Digital Archives

Frick New York Residence Construction Album, 1913

One East 70th Street Album, 1927

Frick Collection & Frick Art Reference Library Construction Photographs, 1933–1935

View images from our digital archives that document three distinct phases in the evolution of the Frick’s buildings: the construction of the private mansion for the Frick family in New York City, the home’s interiors eight years after Henry Clay Frick’s death, and the building’s conversion to a public museum and the addition of an art library. See if you can spot the similarities and differences between the spaces in those eras and their appearance now when you visit our galleries and reading room.

3. The Fricks Collect: An American Family and the Evolution of Taste in the Gilded Age

By Ian Wardropper (2025)

In this recent publication by Director Emeritus Ian Wardropper, get up to date on your knowledge of Henry and Helen Clay Frick and the roles they played in the creation of the private art collection that formed the foundation of The Frick Collection. Enjoy a few chapters devoted to the interiors of the Frick family’s houses, including photographs of their residences in New York City; Prides Crossing, Massachusetts; and Pittsburgh.

4. The Story of the Frick Art Reference Library: The Early Years

By Katharine McCook Knox (1979)

Explore the founding and various homes of the Frick Art Research Library (formerly the Frick Art Reference Library), from its first space in the bowling alley at the Frick family’s New York City mansion to the purpose-built facility designed by John Russell Pope in 1935 that still houses the library today. This book additionally presents early photographic campaigns to document works of art around the country and the activities of the library during World War II. More recent information on the library’s developments can be found on our Library History page and in our ongoing series One Hundred Years at the Library.

5. The Henry Clay Frick Houses: Architecture, Interior, Landscapes in the Golden Era

By Martha Frick Symington (2001)

Read about the Frick residences Clayton, Eagle Rock, and Westmoreland Farm, as well as the historic mansion at 1 East 70th Street, in this book written by one of Henry Clay Frick’s great-granddaughters. The text includes family stories and photographs that supplement the plans and interior and exterior photographs of the family’s various houses around the Northeast.

6. Mr. Frick’s Palace

By Hilary Ballon (2009)

Learn about the architectural context of New York City that surrounded the original Frick family mansion through this essay, based on a lecture given by an architectural historian at The Frick Collection in 2009. Special attention is given to the architectural trends at the time the mansion was built in 1914 and the materials used in its construction. Historic photographs of New York and the Carrère and Hastings building are included alongside the text.

7. Frick Madison: The Frick Collection at the Breuer Building

By Roxane Gay with Ian Wardropper and Xavier F. Salomon (2021)

Take a visual journey through the galleries at Frick Madison—the temporary home of The Frick Collection from 2021–24—through this book documenting the installation of the works of art in the Marcel Breuer–designed building that was once home to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Though the spare, modernist environment of Frick Madison contrasts to the opulent interiors of the Frick mansion on Fifth Avenue, displays from the temporary residency informed aspects of the collection’s recent reinstallation.

All photos by Joseph Coscia Jr., The Frick Collection