PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

As a tour group walks toward Clayton, the meticulously preserved Point Breeze home of the Frick family, tour facilitator Bella Hanley points out the porte-cochère, where wealthy visitors would emerge from their carriages before entering the home.

“If we were good friends of the Fricks,” she says, we would enter here. “But we are not good friends of the Fricks.”

PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

There’s a sly nod in there to the longstanding grudge many Pittsburghers hold against Henry Clay Frick — generationally inherited loathing for the architect of the Homestead massacre. But Hanley is not just referring to Frick’s contentious reputation; she’s pointing out that a visit to Clayton is not merely an opportunity to gaze at a fancy house, but also a chance to come face to face with the inequities of the so-called Gilded Age.

In that spirit, the Frick Pittsburgh last year reinvented its signature tour and gave it a suitable name: “Gilded, not Golden.” The gold is real, but it’s only on the surface.

PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

That doesn’t mean that the grandeur, remarkable artifacts and tireless preservation that Clayton has been known for throughout its history is absent — it just means that needed context is added. Tours still focus, for example, on the orchestrion, an impressive music machine located on the house’s front porch; it makes a cacophonous noise, a symphony in a cabinet. The tour just now takes the time to point out that the item’s original price tag of $5,000 was equivalent to eight years of a steelworker’s salary.

PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

Elsewhere, the story will go beyond the Frick family and focus on the workers who lived in the home, occupying what were secure and relatively well paying jobs for the era … in exchange for being on duty 24 hours a day, available to be roused from bed by the Frick’s whims. “There is a big difference,” Hanley says, “between working from home and living at work.”

Clayton would’ve already qualified as a place we love; it’s a perfectly preserved picture of Pittsburgh’s industrial past, a living museum of illustrative detail and remarkable objects (90% of everything in the building is original). With a new and improved lens through which we can view this Gilded-Age manse, however, it rises to an essential part of every Pittsburgher’s civic education.

Insider’s Tip: There’s a fascinating ghost story about Henry Clay Frick, and it casts an interesting light on some of what you’ll learn on this tour. Officially, guides won’t share it — there’s not enough solid research to establish any part of it as factual enough for a serious historical institution. But, true or not, it’s a good story. Pick up a copy of the book “Haunted Pittsburgh” by Timothy Murray, Michelle Smith and Haydn Thomas to uncover the tale.

While You’re Here: Arrive early — and plan to stick around for a while. You can browse the excellent gift shop in the Grable Visitor Center after you buy your tour tickets; after you’re finished, you can explore other parts of the Frick property — including another one of the Places We Love, the fascinating Car and Carriage Museum.