Leaders of the Frick Art & Historical Center, a Gilded Age compound with collections of old master paintings, automobiles and a Victorian mansion, are determined to maintain the enclave's genteel atmosphere even as they add some modern underpinnings over the next decade.

	From the Frick Art and Historical Center's collection, an oil on canvas commissioned by the Fricks, titled "The Living Hall," painted in 1928 by Walter Gay. Click photo for larger image.

Subtle changes are already occurring, said Bill Bodine, executive director of the complex. After two years of planning, the museum's trustees will meet in March to consider a master plan that may include the addition of a visitors' center to the 5.5-acre site.

"We need a place to orient our visitors, where they learn something about the Frick family, where we can say, 'This is where you are, this is why this place is here, and this is what you will encounter,' " Bodine said.

Now, he added, "It's totally random. People drive in, park and wander. I want people to wander. I just don't want them wandering aimlessly."

A visitors' center could offer an orientation film and exhibition about the Fricks, a gift shop, public restrooms and an informal area where people can purchase tea, coffee and scones. Money would have to be raised for such a project.

The current gift shop and visitors' center is in what was the Frick children's playhouse, a building designed by the architects Alden and Harlow, who also designed Carnegie Institute and several Carnegie library branches.

Moving the gift shop will allow architects to restore that building to the way it looked in the 1890s, when Helen Clay Frick, and her brother, Childs, amused themselves with their very own bowling alley. Childs Frick was born in 1883 and his sister in 1888; the playhouse was built in 1897.

E. Verner Johnson & Associates, an architectural firm based in Boston, is preparing a master site plan of the entire compound and will present it for approval to the Frick's 18 trustees in mid-March. The main goal is to ensure that any new building complements existing structures.

"The Frick has residential scale and residential character. The primary message is to maintain that with anything new that you do," said Louis Sirianni, a former Pittsburgher and a partner in the architectural firm.

In June 2004, Frick trustees approved the strategic plan and set three goals: preserve the permanent collections, expand audiences and integrate a visitor's experience. The goal is to draw more connections among Clayton, the Victorian home of the Frick family, the Car and Carriage Museum and the art museum, so visitors can glean a better understanding of the Fricks, the era in which they lived and what their possessions say about them and the Gilded Age. A visitors' center that orients newcomers to the site will accomplish some of those goals, Bodine said.

After the board approved the site plan, the center secured a $100,000 grant from the Howard Heinz Endowments to do a master site plan.

It makes sense, Sirianni said, to build a visitors' center near Reynolds Street. "That block is not residential. You have the park, which is a public facility, and then you have the museum entry."

Trustees also are considering expanding the kitchen of The Cafe, a restaurant on the Frick grounds.

Staff members are doing a survey of the Frick family's collections and creating an electronic database that provides descriptive documentation. During the next several years, Tom Smart, director of collections and exhibitions, will create a printed catalog of the permanent collection of paintings, sculpture, antiques, cars, decorative objects and other artifacts.

Smart's efforts have already resulted in a new exhibition, "Possessions, Personalities and the Pursuit of Refinement," which opened Friday and runs through April 9 in the art museum.

"Possessions" includes an enameled silver tray used by Adelaide Frick to serve tea and an oil painting of the living hall in the Frick's New York City mansion. Helen Clay Frick's collection focused on 18th-century French art and Italian Renaissance paintings, including a depiction of the Annunciation by Sassetta.

"You take these objects and help people look at them through a different kind of lens. Why did she buy it? What does it say about her? About taste in Pittsburgh? How did her father's collection influence her collection?" Bodine asked, referring to the art collected by Helen Clay Frick and her father, Henry, a coal and steel tycoon.

Visitors to this new exhibit will receive a brochure that encourages them to go to Clayton and the Car and Carriage Museum so they can make the connection between the Fricks' possessions and how the family lived.

Preserving and storing the collections properly are a top priority, said Sirianni, and outfitting the Car and Carriage Museum basement with climate controls could be a solution. Some cars and carriages stored there are too close to maintenance equipment, which ideally would be stored on the site's perimeter, he said.

Retooling the Car and Carriage Museum could solve a pressing need: space. Bodine said that there are artifacts stored in every basement, nook, closet and cranny. The trustees, some of whom are Frick family descendants, also sent pieces from the collection to Iron Mountain, a storage facility in an underground limestone mine in Butler County.

Returning at least some of those collections to Point Breeze will result in financial savings and make it easier for curators to use them in exhibitions.