The Frick Building, one of Downtown's premier office buildings, was sold yesterday to New Jersey-based Rugby Realty Co. Inc.

Post-Gazette file photo The Frick Building, Downtown, was sold yesterday.

Details of the sale were not disclosed, but the building, originally listed at $32.5 million, had been on the market for months. Madison Realty Group Inc., bought the Frick in 1998 for $24.8 million, holding the title as Frick Building Associates LP.

Jeffrey B. Ackerman, executive vice president of CB Richard Ellis/Pittsburgh, brokered the transaction for the building located at 437 Grant St., across from the Allegheny County Courthouse.

The building, full of marble and brass, is more than a premier office building; it is a monument to the ego of its builder, Henry Clay Frick. To build it, Frick dismantled St. Peter's Episcopal Church, which stood on the site, and had it reconstructed, brick by brick, in Oakland. His purpose was to humiliate archrival Andrew Carnegie.

At the time, Carnegie owned an 11-story building that stood on the current site of Kaufmann's annex. When Frick commissioned his 20-story building, and chose its location, "He literally did it to block Mr. Carnegie's view of Grant Street," Ackerman said.

The building, designed by Daniel Burnham, architect of the famed Flatiron Building in New York, was completed in 1902. In 1903, Leslie's Weekly, a national publication, named it "the finest office building in the world."

Ackerman said Rugby hoped to restore the building's splendor.

"They intend to make some major capital improvements, to upgrade the building, putting a particular emphasis on restoring some of the original marble, woodwork and brass in the building," he said.

The building's major tenant is Allegheny County, which uses two floors as an annex to the courthouse. The majority of its other tenants are law-related firms, including title companies and court reporters.