See the 3rd and 4th floors of Henry Clay Frick's Clayton mansion for 1st time

For the first time, the velvet rope across the banister to the third level will be removed and guests will be allowed to climb the stairs for a look at the top two floors of Clayton, Henry Clay Frick’s Gilded Age mansion in Point Breeze.

“The third and fourth floors are very private family spaces,” said Dalena Collins, learning and interpretive coordinator at The Frick Pittsburgh during a media tour in September. “As a guest of the Frick’s, you probably never would have seen those upper floors. You rarely would have seen the second floor. So it’s a very exclusive experience.”

Tours in groups of eight begin Nov. 5 through the end of 2025. Tour dates for 2026 will be announced at a later date.

Tours will be $95, $75 for members.

As guests walk up the narrow staircases, they will see the rooms that housed Frick, his wife, Adelaide, and their four children — Childs, Helen, Martha and Henry Clay Frick Jr., who died as an infant. Martha died at the age of 6.

The Fricks purchased Clayton for $25,000 in 1882 from the Vandevort family. It was an 11-room, Italianate-style building on nearly one and a half acres of land. Constructed in 1870, the home was way too simple for Frick, a noted industrialist and art collector, so he hired Frederick J. Osterling to design an addition, Collins said. The Fricks lived in Clayton from 1883 to 1905 before moving to New York City.

“They would come back for holidays, very frequently, for Christmas, but they always kept the house staffed,” Collins said. “So it was always maintained.”

Some rooms in the upper spaces are filled with furniture from other Frick residences while other areas are being utilized as storage for holiday decorations and family heirlooms. The spaces are raw — there is chipped paint, water damage stains and cracking wallpaper. A bell is still attached high on a wall — most likely used to summon the help 24 hours a day.

During the Gilded Age, about 26 million people came to the U.S., especially from Ireland and Eastern Europe. Single women usually got work as domestic staff and made $17 a month but also had room and board.

“You have a roof over your head but you also are working all the time,” Collins said. “In your bedroom, there is a bell that calls you back to work. It’s something we all experience now with our (smart) phones. You can be called at any time of night, but it’s different when you’re directly employed by the people who are a staircase below you.”

The children’s playroom was converted into a guest room. Throughout the space, there are images that compare what the space looked like in 1900 versus 1984 when it became a museum.

Courtesy of The Frick Pittsburgh

The playroom on the third floor of Clayton as it was in 1984. It served as a guest room at that time.

A floor covered in orange shag carpeting was most likely installed when Helen Clay Frick lived there, Collins said.

“The shag carpeting shows right that this is an evolving piece of history,” Collins said. “This is changing with the times and changing with the people who are choosing the decorations.”

Helen Clay Frick, who never married or had children, wanted to carry on the cultural Frick legacy, Collins said, and upon her passing, the house became a museum with a six year, $6 million restoration project.

“Very early in her life she starts saving things — as early as the 1930s,” Collins said. “Most historic house museums have to deal with the house becoming apartments or something else. We didn’t have to do that. The biggest goal of this tour is to really draw back that curtain of these private spaces that the Frick’s probably wouldn’t have shown their guests. But we’re also drawing back the curtain on the museum process because museums are not infallible.”

Courtesy of Seth Culp-Ressler/The Frick Pittsburgh

The flower room on the third floor of Clayton is a former caretaker space.

Collins said there are an estimated 17,000 collection items.

“I think adding these spaces to the public tour really makes them see the Fricks as real people, a real family, who were living in a real house,” Collins said. “This house exists because of Helen and what she did. I think it’s really important to point out the fact that not everybody had the resources to save their childhood home for 75 years to turn it into a museum.”