Henry Clay Frick really liked the Phipps Conservatory in Schenley Park when it went up in 1892. He liked it so well that he said, “I want one of those in my back yard,” and hired Alden & Harlow to design it. (You can do that when you’re a robber baron.) They gave him a miniature of Phipps Conservatory, with a central greenhouse large enough for substantial citrus trees.
These pictures were taken in March of 2000 with a Kodak Pony 135.
A panoramic view of the Walled Garden. Mellon Park was originally the Mellons’ back yard; the Walled Garden was designed by the landscape architects Vitale and Geiffert.
Until April 4, the Frick is hosting an exhibit called “Impressionist to Modernist: Masterworks of Early Photography.” The “early” part is debatable—the exhibit begins in the 1880s and concludes in the 1930s, by which time photography was already a century old. Father Pitt would call these works “middle” photography. There is no room for debate on the quality of the exhibit itself: all the artistic possibilities of photography as a medium are on display. It was enough to inspire old Pa Pitt to try some work in black and white, so here are some ducks:
Well, it’s not Steichen, but Father Pitt liked the ripply reflections of cattail stalks.
The gatehouse to Frick Park, across from the Frick Art Museum, at Reynolds Street and Homewood Avenue.
Helen Clay Frick built this charming Renaissance palace in her back yard to give the people of Pittsburgh a chance to admire her art collection. It’s a small collection—a Reynolds here, a Boucher there—but an extraordinarily rich one for its size. And in a city where the collective museum culture has decided that expensive admission fees are the rule, the Frick is always free.
A periwinkle flower (Vinca minor) blooms in a front yard in Point Breeze, taking advantage of a short thaw.
The gateway to Frick Park at the Homewood Avenue circle, as it appeared in the gently falling snow this morning.
In the early evening, the Frick Park gatehouse at Reynolds Street and Homewood Avenue seems like the portal to an enchanted forest.
The Frick Art Museum in Point Breeze was built as a home for Helen Clay Frick’s art collection. It’s a small collection, but chosen with good taste–a Boucher here, a Reynolds there, and a roomful of priceless medieval religious art. The building itself is less than forty years old, but the timeless design could easily have been a Renaissance palace.
The Linden Avenue School in Point Breeze. Learning must be something beautiful and important if it takes place in a building like this.
