Helen Clay Frick

Who was Helen Clay Frick?

Helen Clay Frick was an American philanthropist and art collector. She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the third child of the coke and steel magnate Henry Clay Frick and Adelaide Howard Childs. Her father played favorites with his two surviving children, Childs Frick and Helen. After the reading of their father's will, which favored Helen, the two siblings were estranged the rest of their lives. Nonetheless, Helen developed as a strong, independent and feisty young woman. She was equally interested art history and philanthropy, making a catalogue of her father's art collection as a young woman, a collection which became the Frick Collection in New York.

Her interest in art archiving resulted in the Frick Art Reference Library, established early in her life in the bowling alley of the Frick family Pittsburgh mansion, which was moved to New York in 1924. The library housed photographs and archival records for a great amount of European art, many pieces of which were lost during World Wars I and II. She also established an art library at the University of Pittsburgh and late in her life she built the Frick Art Museum on the ground of Clayton to house her own art collection.