Frick Building
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The Frick Building is one of the major distinctive and recognizable features of Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The tower is named after Henry Clay Frick, an industrialist coke producer who created a portfolio of commercial buildings in Pittsburgh.
The tower was built directly adjacent to a building owned by Andrew Carnegie, on the site of Saint Peter Episcopal Church. Local legend states that Frick, who is rumored to have feuded with Carnegie after they split as business associates, had the building designed to be taller than Carnegie's in order to encompass it in constant shadow.
The Frick Building was completed in 1902 and originally had twenty floors. A leveling of the surrounding landscape that was completed in 1912 caused the basement to become the entrance, so some sources credit the building with twenty-one stories. It rises 330 feet (101 meters) above Downtown Pittsburgh. Its address is 437 Grant Street, and is also accessible from Forbes and Fifth Avenues.
The building's architect was D.H. Burnham & Company.
The top floor includes a balcony around the perimeter of the building, a high, handcrafted ceiling, and heavy, elaborate brass door fixtures. Originally, H.C. Frick used it as his personal office and as a meeting place and social club for wealthy industrialists. On the 19th floor was Frick's personal shower. At the time, no other shower had been built that high above ground level, because water could not easily be pumped that high with the technology of the time. The shower, non-functioning, still exists on the 19th floor today. The 20th and part of the 19th floors are now used as offices for Carnegie Learning.
[edit] References
- Toker, Franklin (2007). Buildings of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh: Chicago: Society of Architectural Historians; Santa Fe: Center for American Places ; Charlottesville: In association with the University of Virginia Press. ISBN 0-8139-2650-5.
- Glenn A. Walsh (2001) History of Industrialist, Art Patron, and Philanthropist Henry Clay Frick Retrieved 2005-09-20.
- John Simkin Henry Frick at Spartacus Educational Retrieved 2005-09-20.
- Mellon Square Map Retrieved 2005-09-20.
- Chris Potter (2005) You Had To Ask Archives Retrieved 2005-09-20.
