Born to immense privilege in Paris, France in 1906, Huguette Clark is known as a still-living reclusive heiress.
She is now 104 years of age; has not been seen for decades; has no offspring; and owns hundreds of milions in art and real estate.
ARTKABINETT social network of fine art collectors explores the life of this eccentric and reclusive "rich aunt".
After the death of his first wife, William Clark began an affair with his teenage French ward, Anna Eugenia La Chapelle (1878 - 1963).They married in 1901 in France. Anna was 23 and William was 62. Five years later in 1906, Huguette was born. She is still alive…somewhere.
Her 100's of millions come from her Montana copper king father who bought his way into a U.S. Senate seat. He lived in New York, but also took a shine to a Santa Barbara, California hill, buying it in 1923 for $300,000. It is now worth $100 million. A bird sanctuary that the property overlooks is named for Huguette’s sister, Andrée, who died of meningitis at 16.
Las Vegas' Clark County, Nevada, and Clarkdale, Arizona are named for his copper ventures there.
Senator Clark's art collection -- acquired from multiple voyages to France -- was donated to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. after his death, greatly enriching that museum's holdings of European as well as American art. It includes works by Degas. The Clark donation also included the construction of a new wing for the Corcoran, known appropriately as the Clark Wing
Huguette grew up in the Clark’s 121-room mansion at 962 Fifth Avenue (corner of 77th Street and long since replaced by a grand co-op), with its four velvet-lined art galleries, 225 paintings, a statue by Rodin, Greek and Egyptian antiquities, Gothic tapestries, Persian carpets, a circular marble hall, and antique bronzes representing Ulysses and Prometheus.
It is recreated here in Washington's Corcoran gallery.
Her childhood was of the gilded age with education at the exclusive Miss Spence's School, French tutors, European trips, and debutante balls. She cherished collecting dolls.
In 1925, following the Senator's death, Huguette and her mother moved a few blocks south from their mansion to a sprawling 12th floor apartment at 907 Fifth Avenue (southeast corner of 72nd Street). Huguette Clark would later purchase the entire 8th floor in the building.
It's not clear when, Huguette came to be the owner of all these apartments at the 12-story, J.E.R. Carpenter designed apartment building at 907 Fifth Avenue.
However, it's reported she owns the entire 8th floor and a portion of the 12th floor for a combined 42 rooms and more than 15,000 square feet.
It's not known if Huguette officially combined the two original simplex apartments on the 8th floor into one prairie sized sprawl of if they remain separate.
It's also not clear why Huguette also owns a portion of the 12th floor but it has been rumored that she used the 12th floor apartment to house her beloved and extensive dollhouse collection.
In 1928, she agreed to donate $50,000 (equivalent to $635,088 in 2010 dollarst to excavate the salt pond and create an artificial freshwater lake across from Bellosguardo (aerial view below right), her 23 acre estate on the Pacific Coast in Santa Barbara, California. Clark stipulated that the facility would be named Andrée Clark Bird Refuge after her deceased sister.
Also in 1928, she married Princeton graduate and then law student William MacDonald Gower but they divorced in 1930. The daughter of a former staff member described Clark and her mother as not "odd or strange" but were "quiet, loving, giving ladies."
Over the years, Huguette developed a distrust of outsiders, including her family, because she thought they were after her money. She preferred to conduct all of her conversations in French so that others were unlikely to understand the discussion. Every now and then, she would wave to them from her 8th floor windows.
At Christmas, she would have $500-stuffed envelopes delivered to building staff.
She was a musician and an artist who in 1929, exhibited seven of her paintings at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. She was rarely seen in public following the death of her mother in 1963 and had a very small group of friends
Still alive now at age 104, she became the subject of a series of reports on msnbc.com this year after caretakers at all three of her residences had not seen her in decades.
It was later determined that she was in the care of a New York City hospital. She is reportedly living in an ordinary room and receiving ordinary care from the staff. Building folks reported that she was frail but not ill when she left her Fifth Avenue co-op in an ambulance in the late 1980s.
In August 2010, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office initiated a probe into the her affairs managed by her accountant, Irving Kamsler, and her attorney, Wallace Bock.
Recently Bock submitted a legal response to a petition filed by three of her relatives seeking to have an independent guardian put in charge of her affairs. In that filing he states that in 1988 Huguette Clark voluntarily decided to live at Mount Sinai Medical Center and is now at another Manhattan hospital.
Does she even have a will? Is she aware of what goes on with her estimated half-billion-dollar assets? Did she approve of the secret sale of her beloved $6-million “The Virgin” Stradivarius and her $23.5-million Renoir? And did she really give a friend $10 million?
Her attorney and accountant aren’t saying. She has no children and only distant relatives, who are kept away. Her assets are in the hands of a 78-year-old attorney, Wally Bock, who has only seen her twice, and her longtime accountant, Irving H. Kamsler, 63, a registered sex offender, convicted of using the Internet to send porn to lure several teen girls and attempting to meet them.
Clark’s three unoccupied properties sit idle. She has not visited them since the 1950s. Just as mysterious as her reclusive life is what provisions she has made, if any, for the Clark Estate (overlooking Cabrillo Boulevard, the Andrée Clark Bird Refuge, and the Pacific Ocean).
Also kept ready and waiting for her return visit is her $100-million 42-room Manhattan apartment, jammed with priceless paintings. It is said to be the largest on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park, and a $24-million country house in Connecticut, Le Beau Château, which she bought in 1952 but never lived in, and which is on the market.
The situation cries out for some sort of intervention to ensure that her assets are in good hands and have been handled properly. But so far, no one has undertaken that task.
Caretakers meticulously groom and keep up the 23-acre property and its 21,666-square-foot mansion, Bellosguardo (“beautiful view”). No one has been inside the Manhattan co-op.
Why are relatives being kept away — on her orders or her attorney’s? Does she know what has been sold? Does she know that the IRS was after her for unpaid income taxes? Does she know that her accountant has a felony conviction? Does she know that her accountant and her attorney ended up owning an apartment signed over to them by an elderly client?
She is said to be lucid, but at 104, no spring chicken. According to one of her relatives she has "retreated from the world" and it appears she only communicates when she chooses and only through an attorney. Even her remaining distant relatives are unable to see or speak to the enigmatic centenarian heiress.
What will happen to Huguette's fortune and her real estate holdings after her death remains to be seen. The Connecticut porperty shown here is on the market for $24 million.
Given that she has no direct heirs it's likely that the bulk of her estate will either be divided amongst charitable organizations or, as feared by some, might be swallowed up by the attorneys and as not yet named or known executors of her vast estate.
Given her eccentricities about maintaining major properties that she does not, reportedly, occupy or use, a third plausible option might be that her estates and apartments will be maintained indefinitely and post-humously with large endowments to cover upkeep costs, taxes, maintenance fees, and staff.
The New York district attorney’s elder abuse unit has launched an investigation into the financial affairs of Huguette Clark.
The same unit investigated the Brooke Astor case who was worth only a fraction of Hueguette.
Andre Baeyens, her grand-half nephew who has not ever seen her, told NBC's Today show that "everything stopped for her when her mother died" and that "she just wanted to be home and play with her dolls."
courtesy, Wikipedia and msnbc.com
