HENRY CLAY FRICK BALCONY

Nic East — Mon, 26 May 2008 07:16:54 -0500

In 1991 my friend, the Philadelphia Classical Architect, Alvin Holm came to me with a proposal to build a 4 ft by 12 ft long balcony for his client, Dr Henry Clay Frick of Alpine, New Jersey. Dr Frick loves birds and also wanted a feeder attached to the railing of the balcony so that he could feed them at his leisure. Dr Frick is the third in his legendary family with the same name since he is the grandson of the original partner of Andrew Carnegie and, with his wife now hosts the celebrated Frick Museum on 5th Avenue in New York City. The house was designed in the Classical Style and the balcony was to be of "wrought iron" using the French Classic Style as a guide. We made a lot of sketches and finally came up with the design that you see installed here. The framework is of 4" standard steel channel, made in pieces, completely assembled in our shop, pre-finished and then dismantled and shipped to the site for installation. The consoles that support the balcony are cast aluminum and weigh about 40 pounds each. The railing is completely made of forged steel elements welded into panels that would be reasonably easy to install. I even made a complete illustrated set of installation instructions in my computer CADD program. Since the TURNER CONSTRUCTION CO. was building the house, we had to allow them to do the installation. It has the bird feeder on the left return rail. The owners loved their new balcony so much that they directed their landscaper to hire me to build a terrace railing to match the balcony. INNOCENTI AND WEIBEL of Long Island, NY was the landscape contractor.