october 23, 2014 tHe INDePeNDeNt 29

cover story

Inside Bellosguardo

Mayor Helene Schneider greeted us at the front gate, which is only a few steps from the humble path leading to the volleyball courts on East Beach, and just like that we were inside, privileged early visitors to Santa Barbara’s most-

talked-about long-term vacancy: Huguette Clark’s Bellosguardo. Th e house, a formidable U-shaped structure, sits atop the bluff facing west; the view from its pebbled stone mosaic parking area off ers an incredible panorama of the city.

Our sneak preview was timed with the announcement of the Bellosguardo Foundation’s board of trustees, the 19 people cho-sen by the mayor at the request of the New York State Attorney General’s offi ce, which is closing the estate of Clark, who died at age 104 in 2011. Headed by television producer Dick Wolf, the group will supervise the transfer of the property — along with the proceeds from an estate auction and a substantial collection of art, furniture, and valuable dolls — to a charitable foundation formed

at a bequest of Huguette Clark, who wished via her will “to foster and promote the arts.”

Given the unusual bequest, and the colorful history of both Huguette and her father, former Montana senator and “Copper King” William Andrews Clark, this project will require bold thinking on the part of Wolf and his team. While several appeal-ing components are already in place, including the spectacular, one-of-a-kind location, the high degree of public curiosity, and some important works of art, key questions about the future of Bellosguardo will have to be answered if adequate funds are to be raised to support the operation.

Touring the property in the company of Mayor Schneider, it was easy to feel her excitement about the potential of Bellosguardo. Looking more closely at both the property and its history, it was a little harder to see exactly how this project will coalesce into something that’s both historically plausible and productive of coherent public benefi t.

Exclusive Look Inside Huguette Clark’s East Beach EstateUpon being offered the first chance of any publication in the world to explore the inside of the late heiress Huguette Clark’s mysterious Bellosguardo estate for the fi rst time in at least a half-century, we jumped at the opportunity, despite a few curious strings attached (like not immediately releasing it on independent.com).

One illuminating three-hour tour led by Mayor Helene Schneider later, we present this package of Paul Wellman’s photography, Bar-ney Brantingham’s walking tour, and Charles Donelan’s insightful analysis of what chal-lenges the Bellosguardo Foundation’s newly announced board of trustees will face in making this estate a landmark fi t for Santa Barbara.

CONT’D

What Will Become of Bellosguardo?by Charles Donelan

photos by Paul Wellman

ANALYSIS

y HANDCRAFTED, THEN CRATED: Bellosguardo’s intricately carved paneled rooms (pictured above) were removed from the William Andrews Clark mansion on Fifth Avenue and 77th Street and shipped to Santa Barbara after that house was demolished in 1925.

30 tHe INDePeNDeNt october 23, 2014

Fifth Avenue Comes to East Beach

Unlike many of the other great estates nearby, Bellos-guardo looks like what an antiques dealer would call a “married” piece — it’s a New York house sitting on a Santa Barbara base. Built in the 1930s for the Clarks, the two-story, poured-concrete structure, with its sober limestone siding and French château pretensions, has little resonance with its Spanish Revival neighbors. Th is perception is magnifi ed inside by the various details transported from Senator Clark’s Fift h Avenue mansion. Th e intricately carved paneled dining room, for example, radiates the kind of big-city robber-baron aesthetic one associates with New York’s Morgan Library or the Frick Collection.

It makes a strong impression, this empty mansion that is now fi lled with hundreds of tiny paper tags bearing the name “Christie’s” and coded with identifying lot numbers. “Th ere’s been no period of time when it’s been ignored,” asserted a member of the staff involved in the reported $40,000-per-month upkeep, neatly sidestepping the fact that there’s been no time since approximately 1963 when it’s been used, either.

Th ere’s also been no period when Bellosguardo and its owners paid any signifi cant attention to the culture of the region in which it was built, and in which, for the most part, they did not choose to live. Among the thousands of valuable objects and the dozens of large paintings that adorn the estate’s two wings, I saw none that bore the mark of having been created in this area. Th e Clarks may have had good taste, but theirs was not a taste for the cultural

products of Southern California. From a Santa Barbara point of view,

the mansion might as well be a space-ship loaded with French antiques that crash-landed on our shores. Its primary indigenous expressions are natural ones — the sea eagles, inland hawks, waterbirds, and towhees that nest among the towering cypress trees and a pair of bold foxes that seemed to follow us everywhere as we toured the grounds.

Mission QuestThe board of trustees thus faces a challenge in defi ning the mission of this new public institution. When asked if the estate could be under-stood and presented as a symbol of Santa Barbara, Mayor Schneider hesi-tated before off ering the observation that Bellosguardo “could only happen here.” She added that the diffi cult task of raising enough money to bring it up to code and provide public access was also something that “could only happen here,” presumably because of

Bellosguardo Board of Trustees�

Dick Wolf (chair), Stephen Clark, Joshua

Conviser, Robert M. Day, Ian C. Devine,

Perri Harcourt, James Hurley, Peter Jordano,

Morris Jurkowitz, Robert Lieff ,

Diane McQuarie, Sandra Nicholson,

Jack Overall, Charles A. Patrizia,

James Petrovich, Ron Pulice, Joan Rutkowski,

Gary Tobey, and Anne Towbes

y DECORATIVE GRANDEUR: An ornate railing frames the cylindrical chandelier lighting this spiral staircase.

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october 23, 2014 tHe INDePeNDeNt 31

cover story

There’s nothing remotely like it anywhere else in Santa Barbara: Huguette Clark’s Bellosguardo mansion sits serenely on an East Beach hilltop, looking just the way it did the day the copper heiress walked out the door forever, six decades ago.

Since moving here in 1960, I’d oft en wondered what lay behind those iron gates on East Cabrillo Boulevard, guarding a loft y mansion so mysterious in juxtaposition to frolicking sunbathers on the sand 60 feet below.

Since Huguette and her mother, Anna, decamped from their summer get-away to New York in the early 1950s, few people have been allowed inside. But last Friday, Mayor Helene Schneider gave Th e Santa Barbara Independent an exclusive tour of the two-story, 27-room home looking out on the Pacifi c Ocean on one side and city and mountains on the other.

Coming up the long, curved driveway, you see Bellosguardo, bright against the sky and clad in light Indiana limestone, dominating a 23.5-acre hilltop. Tall cypresses ring the property, along with lemon, lime, orange, and grapefruit trees. Walking in, you notice that, if covers were whipped off the furniture and the rolled-up carpets unfurled, the place would be ready for a party. Before leaving, Clark ordered that her beloved home be kept in “fi rst-class condition” and in “as original condition as possible.”

Th e lights work, but the aged plumbing operates on a septic system and isn’t used. Th ere’s no indoor sprinkler system. Lawns are drought brown.

CONT’D

Exploring the Estateby Barney Brantingham

TOUR

the extraordinary resources and generosity of our community.

Th e fi rst observation is belied by the house itself. Based strictly on its style and content, this mansion could have happened anywhere that late-19th-century American fortunes were displayed, from Newport, Rhode Island, to Asheville, North Carolina. As such, Bellos-guardo stands as an elegant but not particularly chic emblem of late-19th-century American identity in crisis.

As the historical benefactor of a 21st-century nonprofi t, William Andrews Clark has at least three conspicuous strikes against him. He might be forgiven in a contemporary context for apparently never marrying Anna La Cha-pelle, but the circumstances of his “rescue” of her from out of the Butte red-light district when she was a 15-year-old girl and he was in his late fi ft ies are somewhat harder to reconcile.

Nevertheless, this minor indiscretion pales in comparison to Senator Clark’s twin achieve-ments in politics and industry. Many historians consider his campaigns for the senate to have triggered the 17th Amendment, which took the power of electing United States senators out of the hands of state legislators, aft er Clark was reputed to have bought every vote in not one

but two Montana senatorial elections. Even this would not make Clark unusual in a period, the Gilded Age,

defi ned by such colorful behavior. What does continue to stand out, and to distinguish Clark as an extraordinary American entrepreneur, is the literally incalculable damage his businesses did to the environment. Butte is home to the Berkeley Pit, the country’s largest Superfund site and a deadly pool of toxic waste that still threatens to contaminate groundwater for hundreds of miles around the old copper mines.

What kind of museum would be appropriate to memorialize such achieve-ments? Dick Wolf, with his commitment to the environment, extensive experience imagining grand narratives that end with justice being served, and familiarity with the seamy underbelly of New York City, might be just the man to take up this story, which continues to be “ripped from the headlines,” and give it a happy ending. ■

Fifth Avenue Comes to East Beach

Unlike many of the other great estates nearby, Bellos-guardo looks like what an antiques dealer would call a “married” piece — it’s a New York house sitting on a Santa Barbara base. Built in the 1930s for the Clarks, the two-story, poured-concrete structure, with its sober limestone siding and French château pretensions, has little resonance with its Spanish Revival neighbors. Th is perception is magnifi ed inside by the various details transported from Senator Clark’s Fift h Avenue mansion. Th e intricately carved paneled dining room, for example, radiates the kind of big-city robber-baron aesthetic one associates with New York’s Morgan Library or the Frick Collection.

It makes a strong impression, this empty mansion that is now fi lled with hundreds of tiny paper tags bearing the name “Christie’s” and coded with identifying lot numbers. “Th ere’s been no period of time when it’s been ignored,” asserted a member of the staff involved in the reported $40,000-per-month upkeep, neatly sidestepping the fact that there’s been no time since approximately 1963 when it’s been used, either.

Th ere’s also been no period when Bellosguardo and its owners paid any signifi cant attention to the culture of the region in which it was built, and in which, for the most part, they did not choose to live. Among the thousands of valuable objects and the dozens of large paintings that adorn the estate’s two wings, I saw none that bore the mark of having been created in this area. Th e Clarks may have had good taste, but theirs was not a taste for the cultural

products of Southern California. From a Santa Barbara point of view,

the mansion might as well be a space-ship loaded with French antiques that crash-landed on our shores. Its primary indigenous expressions are natural ones — the sea eagles, inland hawks, waterbirds, and towhees that nest among the towering cypress trees and a pair of bold foxes that seemed to follow us everywhere as we toured the grounds.

Mission QuestThe board of trustees thus faces a challenge in defi ning the mission of this new public institution. When asked if the estate could be under-stood and presented as a symbol of Santa Barbara, Mayor Schneider hesi-tated before off ering the observation that Bellosguardo “could only happen here.” She added that the diffi cult task of raising enough money to bring it up to code and provide public access was also something that “could only happen here,” presumably because of

Bellosguardo Board of Trustees�

Dick Wolf (chair), Stephen Clark, Joshua

Conviser, Robert M. Day, Ian C. Devine,

Perri Harcourt, James Hurley, Peter Jordano,

Morris Jurkowitz, Robert Lieff ,

Diane McQuarie, Sandra Nicholson,

Jack Overall, Charles A. Patrizia,

James Petrovich, Ron Pulice, Joan Rutkowski,

Gary Tobey, and Anne Towbes

y DECORATIVE GRANDEUR: An ornate railing frames the cylindrical chandelier lighting this spiral staircase.

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y GOLDEN ARCHES AND BLACK JACK: Paper tags from Christie’s auction house add unlikely accents to many objects in the house, such as this light fi xture. The painting of General John J. Pershing was done by Tade Styka, a well-known portrait artist and one of Huguette Clark’s closest friends.

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cover storyIn the fi rst-fl oor music room, you almost

expect to come upon Anna strumming the gold, custom-made Paris harp that still stands in the huge room and Huguette playing one of her Stradivarius violins. Th ere are two Stein-way grand pianos. Anna died in 1963.

Although Huguette’s will called for Bellos-guardo (“beautiful lookout”) to be devoted to fostering and promoting the arts, her extensive collection of rare paintings remained in her New York City apartment and are being sold off to settle the highly contested $300 million estate. Th ose left on Bellosguardo’s walls are mostly of Huguette, her older sister Andrée, and their father, copper magnate Senator Wil-liam Clark. Aft er Andrée died at 16 of spinal meningitis, Huguette donated $50,000 to the city in 1928 to create the Andrée Clark Bird Refuge across East Cabrillo Boulevard as a memorial.

In the library, books lining the shelves range from I Was Hitler’s Doctor to French author Voltaire. Th e white marble fi replace is exquisitely carved, as is the knotty pine wall paneling. A large portrait of Andrée hangs over the mantel, lighted by a huge crystal chandelier. Judging from the paneling in many rooms, it must have taken a small army of craft smen to create the elegant carvings. Th e home is comfortable looking but by no means ornate or jammed with furniture.

Behind closed doors in the 1904 carriage house, the 1933 Cadillac limo and 1933 Chrysler convertible, apparently not driven for decades, await their fate.

Oklahoma oilman William Miller Graham and his wife, Lee, built the fi rst home here, a 25,000-square-foot Italianate villa in 1903. Aft er the Grahams’ divorce, Senator Clark paid Lee $300,000 in 1923.

Aft er Clark died in 1925, the year that an earthquake damaged the place, Anna wanted it replaced with a strongly built home with a French-infl uenced design. She had the place razed in the mid-1930s and paid Santa Bar-bara architect Reginald Johnson $1 million Depression dollars for a new summer home. Bellosguardo is in city limits but not, as some assume, a city-owned property.

What will become of it largely depends on how much money is left aft er the IRS decides whether to waive $18 million in tax penalties and on decisions by a 19-member board of directors whose names were released this week by Mayor Schneider. (See sidebar of names.) But until the estate is settled in about a year, Bellosguardo will remain pretty much as is, according to Schneider. Resident estate man-ager John Douglas oversees the property. Since the city has placed the property in historic landmark status, the exterior must remain the same. Th ere cannot be Clark Condos.

(Th anks to research by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr., authors of the book Empty Mansions.) ■

< AL FRESCO: Soon after her arrival in Los Angeles from London in 1934, artist Margaret Dobson painted the walls in the Bellosguardo courtyard, where 80-year-old trees bear citrus fruit next to a refl ecting pool.

y GOLDEN ARCHES AND BLACK JACK: Paper tags from Christie’s auction house add unlikely accents to many objects in the house, such as this light fi xture. The painting of General John J. Pershing was done by Tade Styka, a well-known portrait artist and one of Huguette Clark’s closest friends.

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