TSPGH: In miniature

Dear Husband and I recently took an evening walk after dinner. The night was surprisingly mild for July. Because the sun had not set yet, we decided to walk through the grounds of the Frick House. Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) and his wife, Adelaide Howard Childs Frick (1859-1931), lived at "Clayton" from 1883 until 1905, when for business reasons they mostly relocated to New York City. (Frick had fallen out with Andrew Carnegie over labor relations at the steelworks.) Today the mansion is open for tours (currently under renovations), the garage holds old cars, and there is a small separate art museum; the "big Frick" is in the Big Apple.

The greenhouse--which looks like a smaller version of the Phipps Botanical Garden--was open the evening we were there. It holds a variety of common and exotic plants. Next door is the red-brick "Playhouse." Now the site of staff offices, it was a small house with child-sized furniture where the Frick children could practice their future social roles: Helen (1884-1984) invited other girls to tea, and Childs (1883-1965) drilled the neighborhood boys in military-style exercises. (It was the Gilded Age/Age of Empires; he went on to become a naturalist.)

I just hope that when it is safe again, we can attend Summer Fridays at the Frick--free, live lawn concerts to which you could bring a picnic or buy from food trucks. We never went as often as we wanted to or should have, and with the end of residency in June 2020, I had been looking forward to many evenings in a lawn chair, watching other people's kids while listening to good music. One more thing that COVID stole, and something we will miss about living in this neighborhood if we successfully purchase a house next spring.