Frick Greenhouse (The Frick Pittsburgh, Clayton estate)

The Fricks acquired Clayton, an Italianate house in the Point Breeze neighbourhood, shortly after their marriage in 1881, and it was their main residence from 1883 to 1905. A first, small greenhouse was built between August 1882 and June 1883 near the Homewood Avenue fence. In 1897 Henry Clay Frick hired Alden & Harlow, a Pittsburgh and Boston firm that also designed the Carnegie Library and Museum complex, for several projects on the estate: a new greenhouse, minor work on the house and a playhouse for the children.

The head gardener, David Fraser, a 31-year-old Scot recommended by William Falconer, superintendent of the Phipps Conservatory in Schenley Park, ran the greenhouse and grounds from 1896 to 1935 and was known nationally for growing mushrooms. The first flower show open to the public was held in the autumn of 1899, followed by an Easter show in the spring of 1900; each stayed open for several weeks, with visitors coming in through the Homewood Avenue gates. The shows ended in 1914, by which time the family was living in Manhattan.

The greenhouse kept working at reduced capacity during the lifetime of Helen Clay Frick (1888-1984), who wished the estate to open to the public after her death. Renovated and partly reconstructed on the lines of the 1897 structure before The Frick Pittsburgh opened in 1990, it has been part of the visit ever since. The museum dates the end of its family use to the 1970s, a press article to the 1980s.

The 1897 greenhouse was designed by Alden & Harlow working with Lord & Burnham, the American glasshouse firm responsible for the Phipps Conservatory buildings in Schenley Park and the conservatory of the New York Botanical Garden, which also worked on the Golden Gate Park conservatory. When completed it was regarded as one of the most modern greenhouses in the state, public or private.

The museum notes that glasshouses of this kind were usually framed in durable cypress or white pine, with structural members of iron or steel. The building seen today is not the untouched original: it is a renovation combined with a partial reconstruction, carried out on the basis of the structure drawn up in 1897.

It stands just south of the Clayton house, beside the playhouse built the same year and close to the café, within landscaped grounds that the museum describes as a ten-acre site (Wikipedia gives 5.5 acres, about 22,000 m², for the complex). The greenhouse's own dimensions are not published.

In the Fricks' day the greenhouse had to supply the house all year round: fragrant flowers, exotic palms and delicate orchids, but also annuals raised from seed for the outdoor beds, vegetables and mushrooms for the kitchen. The museum mentions chrysanthemums, roses and Bermuda lilies, and up to thirty vases of cut flowers sent to Clayton every day.

Today the greenhouse works in partnership with Grow Pittsburgh, an organisation promoting sustainable agriculture, and grows a wide variety of vegetables and flowers, many of which are used in the kitchen of the museum café. It also hosts art installations: from May to October 2025 the artist Atticus Adams hung sculptures of metal mesh and wire inspired by childhood memories, including a circular piece in tribute to Helen Clay Frick.

The greenhouse is part of The Frick Pittsburgh at 7227 Reynolds Street in Point Breeze. The grounds and greenhouse are free to enter whenever the gardens are open. Half a day allows the greenhouse to be combined with the Clayton house, the Frick Art Museum, the Car and Carriage Museum and a stop at the café, which uses part of the greenhouse harvest. A path winds through gardens and a varied collection of trees. The large city park of Frick Park begins next door, and the Phipps Conservatory in Schenley Park, a few kilometres away, completes a tour of Pittsburgh's Gilded Age glasshouses.