The Newtown Pentacle

Thursday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As described yesterday, Our Lady of the Pentacle and your humble narrator had purchased tickets for, and attended, one of Mark Houser’s ‘Antique Skyscraper’ tours. After visiting the Koppers Building, the next stop on the tour was the Frick Building.

Frickin Frick, that mother fricker, he was a fricker of the friskiest order.

Not a fan of Frick, me. Sorry, this rant gets long…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This guy… the term ‘Robber Baron’ was pretty much coined to describe Frick, and his business tactics. I’ve written a lot about the so called ‘Captains of Industry’ phase of history, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in the past and have betrayed my personal ennui towards these monstrous creatures.

Due to all of my history work on Newtown Creek, back in NYC, Emperor Palpatine of the Galactic Empire John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil Trust have occupied a lot of my attentions over the years. Modern thought has been kind to old John D.’s reputation, but those who were alive at the same time as him considered Rockefeller to be the Devil incarnate. Their impression of him survives in Mr. Potter from the ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ film, and in comic book villains like Lex Luthor. There was no George Bailey nor a Superman to oppose him, and his fortune allowed him to pick and choose Senators and Presidents.

Say what you might about old John D., but you have to respect his rise, and how he single-handedly built the American petroleum industry into the modern day behemoth that it is. He was ruthless, severe… and the king of lassez-faire capitalism. If anyone could return from the dead in the name of pure malice and a desire to control all mankind – it would be John D. Rockefeller.

Henry Clay Frick, on the other hand, was a money man who got his start in financing the manufacture of Coke for the steel industry. His coke business led to him partnering up with Andrew Carnegie, and then into the steel business, which made him fabulously wealthy in an era before income taxes.

The gentleman’s fishing club he was a leading member of had dammed a waterway to create a stocked fishing lake, for Frick and his Millionaire buddies. Their earthen dam and a lack of care towards its upkeep pretty much caused the Johnstown Flood of 1889, which killed more than 2,000 people.

Frick’s absolute antipathy towards negotiating with Steel Worker Unions, and Organized Labor in general, reached its height at the Homestead Pump House on July 6th in 1892, when he sent in 300 armed Pinkerton Detectives to break a strike. When that effort devolved into a battle – which the Pinkertons lost – Frick used his political influence to have Pennsylvania’s Governor send in 4,000 soldiers to defend his prerogatives. An anarchist assassin from NYC later attempted to murder Frick in response, shooting him in the ear (I know, that’s a weird coincidence), and neck, and also stabbed him in the leg. Frick survived, somehow.

After the Homestead strike, Andrew Carnegie’s guilty conscience caused him to sell off his steel interests, and the partnership with Frick, to JP Morgan – whose consolidation of the steel industry eventually formed U.S. Steel. Morgan’s later consolidation of railroads was checked by Rockefeller, but that’s another story.

Frick, as opposed to Carnegie, built a vast and private art collection. He also used his political influence to have business rivals appointed to Ambassadorships in foreign countries, mainly to get them out of his way. The events at Homestead shattered Carnegie and Frick’s partnership at Carnegie Steel, with the two men becoming bitter enemies and rivals for the rest of their lives.

Frick died in a mansion in NYC in 1919, left behind his priceless art collection to museums, and his will disbursed some of his massive property holdings for usage as parkland in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. The Frick Building still stands in Pittsburgh, and its lobby is where this portrait bust was photographed by your humble narrator.

This wasn’t at all a part of Mr. Houser’s narrative, by the way… I just happen to know a lot about Frick, and as stated: not a fan.

Now that all of that is out of my Frickin way…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The tour saw us travel up the twenty stories held hostage within the Frick Building’s walls to a rooftop deck. The Frick building was designed by D.H. Burnham, whose team of architects remain famous for their design of Chicago’s ‘White City,’ during the World’s Colombian Exposition in 1893. Burnham was also responsible for several important building projects during that era, and left behind an outsized footprint.

Me? I got busy with the camera, as this sort of bird’s eye view of Downtown is something which I’ve felt a desire to capture, since moving to Pittsburgh.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As often stated, I’m fascinated by the parabolas and arcing shapes of highway interchanges. That’s the interchange of ‘Boulevard of the Allies’ and ‘Crosstown Blvd.’ pictured above. The ramps leading to the right of the shot lead to the Liberty Bridge, a crossing over the Monongahela River, and the ones leading left in the shot eventually interchange with I-579.

Robert Moses was involved in the design of this set of structures, believe it or not, in an advisory role to the City of Pittsburgh. Power was thereby brokered right here.

The brick colored buildings behind the highway structure above are the City’s jail, and beneath the ramps is a rather large homeless shelter which recently had a calamitous fire.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Luckily, the T light rail was spotted moving towards that section of its route where it operates as a subway while I was still on this Frickin roof. The construction work which is renewing the light rail’s trackbed, nearby HQ back in Dormont, is underway and one such as myself cannot wait to have mass transit restored to my life.

Our tour leader indicated that it was time to move on again, and I made sure that I was at the end of the line for the elevators going back down to ground level, to extend my shooting time up here as long as possible.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The pyramid topped building, at bottom left in the shot above, is the Koppers building described in yesterday’s post, and the U.S. Steel building discussed in Monday’s post is the dark colored structure with the UPMC logo atop it. I’m not entirely sure about the identity of the tan colored one.

Back tomorrow with more, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.

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