On January 27, 1914, the interior designer Elsie de Wolfe sent a brazen business pitch to one of the worlds wealthiest men. Please dont forget me!! she wrote to the industrialist Henry Clay Frick. I am specially good at detail and the fitting up and the comfort of womens rooms, the intimate little touches that no mere man, no matter how clever he may be, can ever know.The ploy worked, and with that, the doyenne of American decor inserted herself into one of the most coveted commissions of the Gilded Age: the decoration of a suite of rooms in Fricks newly built neoclassical mansion on Fifth Avenue between 70th and 71st streets.On April 17 the Frick Collection will reopen to the public after a four-year renovation of the museums home: an Indiana limestone mansion designed by Carrre and Hastings that has been updated and expanded by Selldorf Architects with Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners. There is a refreshed reception hall, an auditorium for lectures and concerts, and a restored Fifth Avenue faade graced by magnolia trees planted in the 1930s that should bloom on cue for the reopening.JASON SCHMIDTThe paneling by the workshop of Andr Carlhian was restored to its original cream hue.But those in the know will head straight to the Grand Staircase, where a gold rope has blocked visitors since the mansion became a museum in 1935, and ascend past the stair halls soaring pipe organ to the second floor. This is where Henry Clay Frick lived with his wife Adelaide Howard Childs Frick and their daughter Helen Clay Frick. These private quarters will be revealed to visitors for the first time in the museums history. In a suite of exquisite spaces, the Boucher RoomAdelaides former boudoirstands apart. It gets its name from eight allegorical panels painted in the Rococo style by Franois Boucher and his workshop. This serene space, with its cream palette, 18th-century furnishings, and Svres porcelains, must have been a respite for Adelaide, whose bedroom was nearby.JASON SCHMIDTThe west walls boiserie and mirrored cabinet were missing and have been reproduced based on archival images.But the history of the Boucher Room has been anything but harmonious. Fricks wealth, and his decision in 1915 to turn the home into a museum after his death, created a feeding frenzy of decorative arts professionals intent on getting in on the action. Just as de Wolfe was finishing the design of Adelaides boudoir, the British art dealer Joseph Duveenwho also sold the Fricks his Fragonard panelspersuaded them to dismantle the space and install the Boucher artworks with new boiserie paneling by French decorative arts specialist Andr Carlhian. Frick died of a heart attack in 1919, having lived in his mansion for just five years. When the museum opened in 1935, four years after Adelaides death, the second floor was converted into offices. The Boucher Roomincluding the panels, the parquet de Versailles floor, and some of the furniturewas moved to the first floor for public viewing, where it remained until 2020, when the Frick was closed for the pandemic, followed by its major renovation. Ira W. Martin / Courtesy Frick Collection / Frick Art Research Library Archives (Boucher Room 1927)The Boucher Room as it appeared in 1927.Xavier F. Salomon, the museums deputy director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, led the efforts to restore and open the second floor. It was his idea to bring the Boucher Room back to its original location. People thought he was cuckoo, says Aimee Ng, the Fricks John Updike Curator. It was highly laborious and very costly. But it was the one chance to do it.The museums chief conservator, Joseph Godla, enlisted period room specialists Traditional Line to disassemble the Boucher Room and bring it back upstairs via the Grand Staircase. The woodwork around the panels had to be refitted, an entire wall of cabinetry recreated, and the draperies rewoven on 19th-century French looms. One of the biggest discoveriesby paint analyst Susan Buckis that the room wasnt originally blue. It was cream with a stri glaze, says Godla, who had the hue recreated. Details of the Boucher RoomNow it looks much as it did in Adelaides time, with its blue silk divan unearthed from more than eight decades in storage, antique marble busts, and cherubic Boucher children in a space with windows that look out directly at Central Park. On the same floor the familys breakfast room, bedrooms, and sitting rooms have all been extensively restored and turned into galleries. Even in a museum filled with Vermeers and Rembrandts, the Fricks private quarters are a unique draw, offering a glimpse into life as it was lived by the wealthiest in the Gilded Age. The house itself, Ng says, was Fricks largest work of art.This story originally appeared in the April 2025 issue of Elle Decor. SUBSCRIBEIngrid AbramovitchExecutive Editor, ELLE DecorIngrid Abramovitch, the Executive Editor at ELLE Decor, writes about design, architecture, renovation, and lifestyle, and is the author of several books on design including Restoring a House in the City.