A DOLL (COLLECTOR'S) HOUSE

In May 2011 a 104-year-old woman died. In her span of life she witnessed the birth of aircraft flight, and the moon landing, World War I, World War II, and the September 11th attacks. She witnessed the beginning of radio, film, television, and the internet. 19 men - Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama, had been president, and five states joined the union. Women earned the right to vote. She narrowly missed perishing on the Titanic. She survived on the millions of dirty dollars her father earned by lying and cheating before the 20th century even began. She had two luxurious homes she never lived in. Instead she preferred to live in a hospital, safe from the outside world. Huguette Clark was one of the world's most famous recluses.

Huguette's father, William Clark was born in a log cabin in Montana. He made his money in mining copper. He built a settlement in the Nevada desert that would come to be known as Las vegas. He ran for senate, bribing anyone who could help him attain the post, then accepted bribes himself once elected. In the Drunk History segment about Las Vegas drunk narrator Chris Romano describes Clark as "a shady fucking character." The moniker is apt. Clark married and raised a large family with his wife. He left that wife for the young female ward his family had taken in, Anna La Chapelle. He was 39 years her senior.

Anna gave birth to their first daughter Andree in 1902. Andree died in 1919 of meningitis. Their second daughter Huguette Marcelle was born June 19, 1906. The Clarks lived in France most of Huguette's early life. In 1911 the family returned to New York to a humble six story, 121 room Fifth Avenue mansion. The house boasted wood taken from Sherwood Forest (of Robin Hood fame.) Huguette attended the elite Spence school. William Clark died in 1925 and Huguette and Anna moved into a penthouse apartment that took up the entire top floor of a building and boasted 42 rooms.

Huguette married William Gower in 1928. She was given Bellosguardo, a mansion in Santa Barbara California as a wedding gift. She divorced Gower in 1930 and moved back to her mother's Manhattan apartment. Huguette remained there most of the rest of her life. Huguette had always been shy, but she had a few close friends. Huguette painted and appreciated art, buying works from painters who would later become masters. She collected dolls and attended fashion shows by the era's best designers, then commissioned the designers to recreate their Haute Couture fashions for her dolls.

In the 1930s she had the original Bellosguardo torn down then rebuilt to help workers unemployed during the depression. She rarely visited Bellosguardo but endowed a multi-million dollar fund to keep the mansion operating on a daily basis. In 1952 she commissioned the building of Le Beau Chateau, an estate in New Canaan Connecticut but never made that estate her home. Huguette's mother died in 1963 and Huguette retreated further away from society. She lived alone in her apartment painting and collecting dolls, and entertaining her few friends.

In 1991 she had cancerous lesions removed at a New York City hospital. She decided to live in the hospital instead of returning home. She paid $829 per day at the hospital let her stay. Huguette died on May 24, 2011. She left a $300 million fortune - which her father began earning before the Civil War.

Huguette Clark

SOURCES :

Empty Mansions

Huguette Clark. Wikipedia.

FURTHER MEDIA ~

BOOKS :

Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune ~ 

Bill Dedman / Paul Clark Newell Jr

PODCASTS : 

Lambert, Katie and Dowdey, Sarah, hosts. "The Copper Kings and the Recluse Heiress." Stuff You Missed In History Class, iheartradio,15 June 2011.

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