The 20-story Frick Building, SW. corner 5th Ave. and Grant St., designed in Neoclassic style by D.E. Burnham & Co. of Chicago and erected in 1904 by Henry Clay Frick, the coke magnate and steel master, has a main lobby embellished with a stained-glass window, Fortune and Her Wheel, by John La Farge.
Frick laid the foundations of his fortune through the establishment of coke ovens. By the time he was 30 he had amassed $1,000,000. His vast coke and railroad interests eventually brought him into association with Andrew Carnegie, the steel king. Their relationship was marked by intermittent conflict over labor policies and business management. Shortly after the bloody Homestead strike of 1892 Frick was shot and stabbed, though not fatally, by Alexander Berkman, an anarchist. Frick died in 1919 leaving an estate valued at $120,000,000.
--- Pennsylvania, A Guide to the Keystone State, 1940
From Wikipedia:
"The Frick Building is one of the major distinctive and recognizable features of Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The tower is named after Henry Clay Frick, an industrialist coke producer who created a portfolio of commercial buildings in Pittsburgh.
The tower was built directly adjacent to a building owned by Andrew Carnegie, on the site of Saint Peter Episcopal Church. Local legend states that Frick, who is rumored to have feuded with Carnegie after they split as business associates, had the building designed to be taller than Carnegie's in order to encompass it in constant shadow.
The Frick Building was completed in 1902 and originally had twenty floors. A leveling of the surrounding landscape that was completed in 1912 caused the basement to become the entrance, so some sources credit the building with twenty-one stories. It rises 330 feet (101 meters) above Downtown Pittsburgh. Its address is 437 Grant Street, and is also accessible from Forbes and Fifth Avenues.
The building's architect was D.H. Burnham & Company.
The top floor includes a balcony around the perimeter of the building, a high, handcrafted ceiling, and heavy, elaborate brass door fixtures. Originally, H.C. Frick used it as his personal office and as a meeting place and social club for wealthy industrialists. On the 19th floor was Frick's personal shower. At the time, no other shower had been built that high above ground level, because water could not easily be pumped that high with the technology of the time. The shower, non-functioning, still exists on the 19th floor today. The 20th and part of the 19th floors are now used as offices for Carnegie Learning."
From the City of Pittsburgh web site:
"The construction of the Frick Building, a severe Greek Classical structure of steel encased in limestone and granite, marked the beginning of corporate dominance on Grant Street. The columns at the base were originally at street level before the lowering of "the Hump", the steep hill at Grant Street and Fifth Avenue, in 1912. The lowering of the entrance made the marble lobby even more impressive by making it two stories tall. Daniel Burnham and Company, a nationally-known Chicago-based firm, designed a total of seventeen buildings in Pittsburgh - many commissioned by Henry Frick, the coke and steel magnate - including the Union Station at Grant Street and Liberty Avenue.
The lobby of the Frick Building is a two-story, T-shaped space sheathed in white marble and designed in the Beaux Arts Classical style. Contrary to the effect at the Courthouse, the lowering of the lobby floor caused by the lowering of Grant Street in 1913 created a more impressive space than the original lobby, which was at the level of the elevator mezzanine. In the front section of the lobby, the ceiling is coffered with boldly veined marble panels, and striking marble stairs climb both sides to the mezzanine.
The American sculptor Alexander Proctor created the bronze lions in the front windows. The rear lobby, which extends from Forbes to Fifth Avenue, is presided over by a marble bust of Henry C. Frick, the industrialist who commissioned the building.
The stained glass window, which has been damaged in the past, was designed and made by the noted artist John LaFarge."