Imagine capturing a grown bear running loose on the Throgs Neck Bridge. Fife Symington, the former governor of Arizona and grandchild of Childs and Frances Frick who lived at the Gold Coast property in Roslyn Harbor that is now Nassau County Museum of Art, told this madcap tale as he toured a group of family and colleagues through his grandparent’s mansion and estate, recalling for them many of his childhood memories of holidays and other visits at his grandparents’ home.
But back to that rampaging bear. Clayton, as the Gold Coast mansion and extensive 145-acre property was known during the lifetime of Childs and Frances Frick, boasted a large menagerie of animals gathered for the family’s enjoyment, especially that of the Frick’s four children. The animals included a bear who had his own bear pit but became difficult to keep as he got older and had to be brought to a zoo. On the way to his new home, the bear managed to free itself from the vehicle and then lead animal control personnel on a merry chase across the bridge. For the active Frick family, excitement with their animals wasn’t exclusive to a bear on the loose. Symington reported that dinner guests might spot a boa constrictor slithering high atop the dining room walls, possibility even falling down onto a diner’s head. But, he said, the reptiles were always fed before being allowed to roam the mansion so weren’t a danger to family or guests.
This was just one of the many stories Symington shared with the group. As he toured the building, Symington was particularly interested to see the mansion’s intricate moldings, ceiling décor and distinctive paneling peeking out above and aside the walls that had transformed the Frick’s dining and living areas and bedrooms into museum gallery spaces. Jean Henning, the museum’s senior educator and archivist, showed Symington many details of the mansion’s conversion to a museum and how some of the Frick children and grandchildren’s favorite hiding places had become museum storage areas.
The Frick family lived at Clayton until Childs Frick’s death in 1965. Nassau County bought the property in 1969 for use as a museum operated by the county’s Office of Cultural Development. In 1989, Nassau County Museum of Art became a private not-for-profit institution under the governance of a board of trustees responsible for its operation and finance.
