The Italian Renaissance-style Frick Art Museum, designed by Pittsburgh architects Pratt, Schafer & Slowik, opened in October 1970. The other buildings that now make up The Frick Pittsburgh—Clayton, the Car and Carriage Museum, the Playhouse, and the Greenhouse—did not open to the public for another twenty years. The museum houses the collection of Helen Clay Frick, who grew up at Clayton, the family home at the corner of Penn and Homewood Avenues at the other end of the property. Her collecting interests included French 18th-century painting and decorative arts, and early Italian Renaissance painting. Inspired by her father's construction of The Frick Collection in New York, she believed art was best appreciated in elegant galleries designed to feel more like domestic spaces than large public exhibit halls. At her death in 1984, she left plans for Clayton and the adjacent grounds, including the art museum, to be opened to the public.
