Preservation Group Opposes Frick Collection's Expansion

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A group of preservationists rallied Monday morning at City Hall calling on the City Landmarks Commission not to vote on a proposed expansion of the Upper East Side's Frick Collection until the public has more time to weigh in on the museum's proposal.

The group, called Stop Irresponsible Frick Development, claims that an expansion unveiled in April by the Frick Collection — located in a mansion on Fifth Avenue between East 70th and 71st streets — is an attempt to commercialize the museum, which was never meant to be an institutional museum such as The Met or the Guggenheim.

"If this harmful plan is approved it will open the floodgate to the over-commercialization of yet another museum in New York," lawyer David Scharf said Monday during a rally on the City Hall steps. "And we're here to say that it cannot happen. We have to protect and preserve the house museum's historic elements and the original architecture."

The group's main qualms with the expansion plan are that it will alter the Russell Page Garden and that it will replace the historic Music Room with "generic" gallery space. The Music Room is currently being considered for an interior landmarks designation, preservationists said.

A spokesperson for the Frick Collection said that the museum's expansion plans include the restoration of the Russell Page Garden and that neither the garden nor the music room are part of the original Frick mansion's architecture. The spokesperson also contested Stop Irresponsible Frick Development's assertion that the Fruck is a house museum, stating "it is a cultural institution with exhibitions, acquisitions, and educational programming and has expanded three times previously, first in 1931-35, in its efforts to better serve the public."

Stop Irresponsible Frick Development asked a judge not to let the city Landmarks Preservation Commission vote on the proposed expansion until the public be given more time to offer testimony or until the commission has a chair or vice chair able to vote. Former LPC chair Meenakshi Srinivasan resigned in April and the current vice chair cannot vote on the Frick proposal due to a conflict, Scharf said Monday.

Martha Frick Symington Sanger — a descendent of Henry Clay Frick, whose mansion houses the Frick Collection — said the museum's rush to get its expansion plans approved is "crazy." Frick Symington Sanger also took issue with the use of modern designs utilizing bronze and glass in the expansion plan.

"I hope we can encourage the Frick to reevaluate what they are doing and to give the public time to consider and to think," Frick Symington Sanger said Monday.

Preservationists argued that the Frick Collection could expand by buying townhouses near the museum — as it has done three times in the past — or by exploring building its new spaces underground.

A spokesperson for the Frick Collection said that only a 6,000-square-foot unit in the townhouse is for sale, not the entire building, and that the expansion will utilize existing underground space as well as adding underground space.

Museum officials revealed a planned $160 million expansion project in April. Selldorf Architects was tapped to helm the project, which will result in added gallery and administrative space. Construction on the expansion project is expected to begin in 2020 and take two years to complete, museum officials said in April.

The expansion will be the Frick Collection's first major renovation since 1935, when the historic building was converted from a private residence into a public museum and library. The mansion was originally constructed as a home for industrialist, financier and art collector Henry Clay Frick.

The city Landmarks Preservation Commission is set to consider the expansion plan on Tuesday, June 26.

Photo by Brendan Krisel/Patch