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Museum on Seattle's First Hill opens on February 8, 1952.
HistoryLink.org Essay 3126 : Printer-Friendly Format On February
8, 1952, the Frye Art Museum, located at 704 Terry Avenue on
Seattle's First Hill, opens. The wills of the meatpacker Charles
Frye (1858-1940) and his wife Emma (Lamp) Frye (d. 1934)
establish the private art museum. They direct their executors to
create a free public museum to exhibit their collection of
mostly nineteenth-century German Romantic paintings. Paul Thiry
(1904-1993) designed the museum building. The collection has
expanded since then, beginning with the acquisitions of the
first director, Walser Greathouse (d. 1966). But the abiding
rule has been to stick with realism. No abstraction here. After
Walser's death, his widow Ida Kay Greathouse ran the museum for
28 years. Regina Hackett writes that she became famous "for her
shrewd management of the museum's finances as well as her
outspoken and reactionary views in bo