The Frick Collection
Master Plan & Portico Gallery
New York, NY

60,000 sf • 5,574 SQ M

The Frick Collection houses the masterpieces of Western painting, sculpture, and decorative art amassed by Henry Clay Frick in the mansion that he built on Fifth Avenue in New York. Built in 1913–14 and designed by Carrère and Hastings, the house includes sixteen galleries arranged as they were while Henry Clay Frick was in residence.

Master Plan. Davis Brody Bond was engaged to develop a Master Planning Study with the goal of providing for the Frick Collection’s evolving needs while respecting the undeniable character of the existing house, library, gardens and collection. The study focused on visitors’ experience by examining amenities such as the lobby, coat check, café and gift shop. Exhibit space, both temporary and permanent, was studied to find new ways to improve the quality of the education program space such as reconfiguration of the 200-seat auditorium and classrooms.

Portico Gallery. The Portico Gallery, the first implementation of the Master Plan, has transformed a once inaccessible exterior loggia facing the Fifth Avenue Garden into a new interior gallery for the display of sculpture and porcelain. The new gallery carefully maintains and preserves the original character and feel of the loggia as an outdoor space by incorporating the structure’s most important features, such as the colonnade, bluestone floor and exterior limestone walls and bas reliefs. To minimize the architectural impact of the new glazing, fourteen foot high, self-supporting structural glass panels extend along the south facing colonnade resulting in minimal interference and attachment to the historic fabric. As the first expansion of The Frick Collection in thirty-five years, the Portico Gallery displays one of the museum’s most significant pieces of sculpture as well as a developing collection in the decorative arts.

(Photography by Paúl Rivera)