Influential Figures

Influential Figures. Frick Park. , Henry Clay Frick , Frick was born in 1849 in West Overton, Westmoreland County, PA. He attended Otterbein University for one year, but did not graduate. In 1871, at 21 years old, Frick joined two cousins and a friend in a small partnership, using a beehive oven to turn coal into coke for use in steel manufacturing. The company was called Frick Coke Company., Thanks to loans from the family of lifelong friend Andrew Mellon, Frick was able to buy out the partnership by 1880. The company, renamed H.C. Frick and Company, employed 1,000 workers and controlled 80% of the coal output in Pennsylvania., Frick met Andrew Carnegie in New York City in 1881. This meeting resulted in a partnership between H.C. Frick and Company and Carnegie Steel Company, and was the predecessor to United States Steel. Henry Clay Frick died in 1919 and is buried in Homewood Cemetery., John Russell Pope , Frick Park's distinctive stone gatehouses share something with the Jefferson Memorial: they were both designed by the famed architect John Russell Pope. Between 1931 and 1935, Pope was converting Henry Clay Frick's Fifth Avenue home in New York City to The Frick Collection, and was presumably was contracted by the Frick family to design some structures for the park. There are four gatehouse entrances: two on Beechwood Boulevard near the present-day Environmental Center, a smaller structure at the and of the Fern Hollow Bridge on Forbes Avenue, and one on Reynolds Street which was restored by the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy in 2000. Another entrance structure, a simple cairn at the intersection of Forbes Avenue and Beechwood Boulevard, was also designed by Pope., Umberto Innocenti and Richard K. Webel , These renowned landscape architects of Long Island, New York, began as consultants for the park in 1937. They recommended several changes including planting of evergreen screens, additional trails, demolition of a clubhouse, addition of an archery range, conversion of Nine Mile Run swamps into a lake, and conversion of entry roads into pedestrian paths., Many other improvements were made between 1937 and 1939 including the addition of paths, plantings, and the establishment of lawn areas. In 1940 a Nature Study Theater was construction and Innocenti and Webel began to plan the park as an arboretum with ecological groupings of plant communities. Between 1941 and 1948 several park improvement projects were developed for the former country club area, the Nine Mile Run area, and parking, along with a general plan for the entire path system of the park.