The Frick Pittsburgh’s Clayton mansion home tour is called Gilded, Not Golden, but it shines in its own right. Guide Julie Silverman begins the tour by handing guests a tiny, sparkling piece of gilt. She noted that you can gild anything, hiding its original surface properties — which is, in part, what was on Mark Twain’s mind when he coined the phrase The Gilded Age to describe the era of industrialization and the vast fortunes it spawned. Clayton stands on what was once Pittsburgh’s Millionaire’s Row on Penn Avenue. But rather than beginning the tour at the stately front stairway that the millionaire industrialists themselves entered through, Silverman began the tour at the workers’ entrance.
Clayton’s conservators left a single grey square near the entrance, similar to the single smear of dirt left on the Crowning of Labor mural at the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Grand Staircase. The smear of dirt serves as physical evidence that even in the most opulent of homes, the air quality in Pittsburgh was not gilded in the slightest. “Does smoke know to stop when it floats into a rich neighborhood? No,” Silverman said.
Gilded, Not Golden recently received a 2024 Leadership in History Award from the American Association for State and Local History. Amanda Gillen, Director of Learning & Visitor experience at the Frick, remarked on the award that “while the facts of history don’t change, the lens through which we see them and the ways we make history available and accessible to the public do and should, and that’s what this project to reimagine the tour of Clayton has been about.” This re-interpretation of the home tour honors Pittsburgh’s labor history and focuses on the workers in the home rather than solely on the Fricks.
“What you surround yourself with elevates you.”
An early stop on the tour was the orchestriat, a self-playing musical device Andrew Carnegie recommended that Henry Clay Frick import from Europe. Silverman made a remark that, though applied to a Gilded Age industrial family, is also solid advice for anyone looking to decorate their home: “What you surround yourself with elevates you.” The Fricks surrounded themselves with lavish items from New York that sometimes clashed with their home décor, including a grandfather clock that stands out in the lobby for its flashiness among otherwise stately matching furniture. But, as Silverman pointed out, even millionaires sometimes find it to be too much of a hassle to return things.
To highlight the massive wealth gap of the Gilded Age, many objects have their prices beside them. The prices compare how much a steelworker or housemaid would have to make to purchase it. The orchestriat cost $5000—a steelworker at the time made $460 a year. Adjusting for inflation, $5000 in 1892 would be $172,623.63. That $460 would be $15,881.37. Either way, a steelworker would have had to work for ten years in order to buy the grandiose musical item Frick bought to entertain guests.
A More Complex History of Clayton
A labor-focused home tour runs the risk of becoming preachy. That the Fricks were exploitative is not exactly a secret, and we would hope that museums can trust visitors, to some degree, to look at historical objects and spaces in their context. And I have to confess that for much the same reason many enjoy reality shows about the very-rich, I love getting to see the decadence of the wealthy of bygone eras.
But the Gilded, Not Golden tour balances out the violence of the Fricks’ effect on labor history with an appreciation for the beauty of the home. There are plenty of scarlet brocade walls, malachite-covered ivory hairbrushes, glimmering pieces of china, and one dazzling evening gown on display, for soulless materialists like me. In all seriousness, though, the home is beautiful, and you could spend hours in each room.
Beyond the surface, though, the stories of the young women that worked in the home to make it so beautiful are enthralling and complex. One standout on the Frick home tour is Jane Grandison, the Frick family’s nurse, who put much of the money she made back into her community in the Hill District. Grandison counseled the Frick family through one of the most difficult times in their lives, a period which tour leans into.
The Battle of Homestead
The program situates the tour in 1892, the year of the bloody Battle of Homestead labor strike. That same year, personal tragedy struck the Fricks. They lost two young children—six-year-old Martha and an infant son. To some degree, the family never quite got over their grief. The context of drama, violence, and loss in that period came through in Silverman’s storytelling, juxtaposing the two lost Frick children with the death toll of both steelworkers and Pinkertons (a hard-nosed enforcement agency brought to Pittsburgh to union-bust). These very numerous losses affected countless Pittsburgh families.
There’s a great irony to some of Frick’s behavior. At times, he could be self-aware, like in the moment when he told Carnegie “I’ll see you in hell, where we’re both going” on his deathbed. But at the same time, access to great wealth can blind a person. “Frick wanted to move his art collection to New York because the air in Pittsburgh was so smoggy. Whose fault did he think that was?” Silverman posed.
Like some of the best stories, the Gilded, Not Golden home tour of Clayton does not position heroes or villains, but instead asks people to think for themselves about what they’re seeing. Yes, the evening gowns are beautiful. But objects do not exist by themselves. Silverman ended the tour by playing the orchestriat. It was a resonant note to finish on, to remind us that each of these historical objects was once really used. One day, the industrialists of our time will be discussed just as Frick was. The notes of the orchestriat are among what remains of the Frick family legacy—beautiful, but a little haunting, too.
Story by Emma Riva / Photography courtesy of the Frick Pittsburgh
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