Historic Gold Coast Mansion

Most of the Museum’s 145 acres originally belonged to William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), long time editor of the New York Evening Post, and also a poet, lawyer, conservationist, political activist, and patron of the arts. In 1843 Bryant settled in his Roslyn home, Cedarmere, on Hempstead Harbor, adjacent to the Museum. It became an intellectual and cultural center for some of the greatest minds of the mid to late 19th century. In 1862 Bryant built a Gothic Revival board guesthouse on his Upland Farm, now the Museum property. Named for his friend and fellow poet, Jerusha Dewey, who was a frequent visitor, the cottage was restored by the Roslyn Landmark Society in 2011.

In 1900, Lloyd Stephens Bryce purchased Bryant’s Upland Farm and commissioned the architect and tastemaker Ogden Codman to design a neo-Georgian mansion on an elevated site overlooking Hempstead Harbor, now Nassau County Museum of Art. Bryce is best known as editor and owner of The North American Review, a forum for international opinion on social, political, and cultural affairs.

In 1919 Henry Clay Frick, co-founder of US Steel Corporation and world famous art collector, purchased Bryce House as a gift for his son and daughter-in-law, Childs and Frances Frick. They hired British architect Sir Charles Carrick Allom to redesign the facade as well as the interior of their new home, which they named Clayton. The grounds at Clayton developed by the Fricks were among the foremost landscapes in America.

Frances and Childs Frick lived at Clayton with their children, Adelaide, Frances, Martha and Henry (nicknamed Clay), for almost 50 years. Childs died in 1965 at the age of 81. Four years later the estate was purchased by Nassau County to establish the Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, administered by the county’s Office of Cultural Development. In 1989, the Museum became a private not-for-profit institution, governed and funded by its own board of trustees. A major exterior restoration of the historic mansion was undertaken some years ago; the mansion was then renamed the Arnold and Joan Saltzman Fine Arts Building.