He also has the dubious distinction of having inspired the 17th amendment to the American constitution which provides for direct elections for US senators – it was introduced after he tried to buy a seat.Ĭlark built a house on Fifth Avenue a few blocks from where Huguette eventually moved. He was seminal in the founding of Las Vegas, which he established as a maintenance base for one of his railway lines. Notorious for his curmudgeonly ways and temper, Clark is still remembered in Montana as the man who stripped the state of its natural wealth. He was a copper tycoon from Montana, second in riches only to the oil magnate John Rockefeller. If Clark sounds a little irregular, then consider the source of her wondrous wealth – her father, William Clark. She was last spotted there at least 22 years ago.

Her inheritance included Bellosguardo, a mansion worth $100m overlooking the Pacific in Santa Barbara, California, which she last visited 50 years ago, as well as the $24m Le Beau Chateau, tucked among 21 hectares (52 acres) of land in Connecticut, which she bought in 1952 and expanded with an artist's loft but never occupied.Ībove all, there was the Fifth Avenue apartment, distinguished by being the largest at that illustrious Manhattan address, with 42 rooms over one and a half floors of an entire block. She made Howard Hughes seem outgoing.'īy choosing to closet herself away at Beth Israel, Clark deprived herself of fabulous riches. The last known photograph of her shows her standing on a steamship swaddled in furs it was taken in 1930.Īs MSNBC's investigative reporter Bill Dedman, who has written the definitive work on Clark and last year tracked her down to a bustling corridor in the hospital, has put it: 'She wasn't sick. For the past 22 years or more, she has lived under a false name in a hospital room, most recently in the Beth Israel Medical Centre, New York, where she died on Tuesday, with no one other than her lawyer allowed to visit her.

Huguette clark book