funranium | The Civic Patrimony Of An Asshole

As I was fiddling through the random junk given to me in my convention bag, I started looking at the map of downtown Pittsburgh and noticed the little blurb for the Frick Art & Historical Center. That gave me a bit of a start because when I hear the name Frick in association with Pittsburgh, I am thinking of the Homestead Strike, Pinkertons, and attempted assassination.

Henry Clay Frick, the union buster superintendent who called 12,000 Pennsylvania State Militia, courtesy of the governor who wasn't about to argue with Carnegie Steel, leading to one of the bloodier episodes in American labor gets his own damn art museum with history told his way. It would be like building a Mengele Cultural Enrichment & Clarification Center near Auschwitz.

I then discovered, while reading my hotel's historical info in that other generally useless book every hotel room has that the Omni William Penn had been built by Frick along with much of this part of downtown.

Such are the wages of sin. When invested, they seem to pay a decent dividend.