New Canaan Now & Then: ‘Le Beau Chateau’ (the Huguette Clark Estate)

‘Now & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Joanne Santulli, Karen Ceraso, Bettina Hegel and Schuyler Morris.

“Le Beau Chateau” (beautiful country house) was built in 1937 for former U.S. Senator David A. Reed of Pennsylvania. 

Mr. Reed was a United States senator from 1922 to 1935. Along with Congressman Albert Johnson, Senator Reed was co-author of the Immigration Act of 1924, the purpose of which was to restrict the movement of Eastern and Southern Europeans into the United States, and prohibit Asian immigration in its entirety.

Mr. Reed purchased the property in 1936 and the house was designed by Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker of New York. The contractor was the Miller-Reed Company of Norwalk (and New York). A December 1936 article in the New York Times stated that “among the unusual features are: a linen chamber, the walls of which bear glass-enclosed shelves; a chamber in the basement for the drying of draperies; air conditioning for the dining and living rooms, and chromium-plated tubes in all bathrooms for drying and warming towels.” The Reeds were married in 1907 and Mrs. Adele Wilcox Reed died at the home in June 1948. She had been an active participant in the New Canaan Garden Club. Mr. Reed died in 1953 in Sarasota, Fla. from a heart seizure. 

 In 1952 (land records list the date as July 1951) the property was purchased by Huguette M. Clark, the daughter of William A. Clark, a Montana senator and copper king. Apparently, Ms. Clark never spent a night in the house on her estate in the 62 years she owned the property. She also didn’t step foot on the property for the last two decades of her life, choosing instead to voluntarily live in New York hospitals (also foregoing living in her Fifth Avenue apartment). Ms. Clark’s caretaker kept the house in impeccable condition, even keeping the floors polished. The 22-room mansion has 13-foot ceilings, 11 fireplaces, and original ornate architecture with marble and herringbone floors.

In May 2008, the property was approved for a 10-lot subdivision with certain caveats: 15 acres of protected open space, $250,000 for a land conservation fund, the original house (Advertiser article dates house as 1941) and the two caretakers cottages must remain. A walking path through the conservation land was pressed at the time by Mr. George Wendell but was not accomplished. The approved subdivision never came to fruition. An Architectural Digest 2017 article lists the home as having nine bedrooms and declares that the acquisition by Huguette Clark in 1952 was “as a sanctuary amid Cold War-era fears of nuclear Armageddon. 

The Clark family story is a strange one. Mr. William Andrews Clark was born in a log cabin in Pennsylvania in 1839 and was the son of Scotch Irish and French Huguenot immigrants. In Michael Malone’s Battle for Butte he quotes Warren G. Davenport as describing Clark as “There is craft in his stereotyped smile and icicles in his handshake. He is about as magnetic as last year’s bird’s nest.” His lack of personality did not have an ill effect on his ability to make money. Mr. Clark spent two years panning for gold before he turned to selling goods that he hauled by wagon through the Rocky Mountains. He reportedly purchased eggs for 20 cents a dozen and marketed them for $3 a dozen to miners. The miners were fond of a brandy eggnog called Tom and Jerry. As a side note, Wikipedia offers this definition of the drink: A Tom and Jerry is a traditional Christmas time cocktail in the United States, sometimes attributed to British writer and professional boxing journalist Pierce Egan in the 1820s. It is a variant of eggnog with brandy and rum added and served hot, usually in a mug or bowl (just in time to add this to your holiday cocktail list).  

When Mr. Clark took a year off to study geology at Columbia University he took ore from his four claims in Butte to the Columbia School of Mines. In 1863 he was a miner in Bannack, Mon. and by the end of the century he would own banks, railroads, timber, newspapers, sugar, coffee, oil, gold, silver and seemingly unending veins of copper. 

Mr. Clark was influential in having Helena named as the state capital and was so popular that when the capital was approved, his carriage was pulled through the town in celebration by the crowds. His political victories were well received in the town partly because for every victory he won he would buy drinks for the entire town, with bar tabs exceeding $30,000. His political ambitions were stymied by his rival Marcus Daly, who despite not having political ambitions of his own, was intent on denying the success of Clark in securing a position. 

It was known as the “War of the Copper Kings” and involved “renting newspapers” to influence popular opinion or buying them outright prior to an election, editorializing for their benefit and selling them back to the original newspaper owners afterwards. The position as a state senator was believed to have been secured through bribery. The Montana Historical Society is in possession of an envelope bearing his initials with thousand-dollar bills used to bribe Montana legislators to send him to the U.S. Senate in 1899. Mr. Clark was privately quoted at the time of his resignation as “I never bought a man who wasn’t for sale.” Time claimed that the word among legislators was, “Every man who votes for Clark is to be paid, and the men who vote for him without being paid are fools.” Mr. Clark was elected again in 1901 and only served one term.  However, for the rest of his life he insisted on being called “Senator Clark.” In 1922 he was the second richest man in America – tied with John D. Rockefeller.

Mr. Clark’s personal life also had some questionable facts. His first wife, Katherine, was his childhood sweetheart and the pair had four children. Ms. Katherine Clark died in 1893.  By then, the four children were grown. In 1904 Clark announced that he had a second wife (married three years prior although no marriage record could be found). The new Mrs. Anna Clark nee La Chapelle (a/k/a Anna Lashpell from Calumet Michigan) had been Mr. Clark’s ward. She was sent by Clark to boarding school, then Paris where she studied the harp. The Clarks had two children, Andree who was born in 1902 in Spain and Huguette who was born in 1906 in Paris. Ms. Clark was 23 at the time of her wedding to the 62-year-old Clark. The adult children from his earlier marriage stood by their father despite the fact that their new stepmother was younger than they were. Mr. W.A. Jr. was well-known in Los Angeles where he formed the Los Angeles Philharmonic and was an early benefactor. He collected rare books and upon his death his collection was donated to the University of California (William Andrews Clark Memorial Library). He also donated money to his alma mater-the University of Virginia as Clark Hall, which first housed the law school. 

Mr. William Clark and his new family built a great house at 962 Fifth Avenue which was known as “Clark’s Folly.” The young family moved to the new house in 1907. It had 121 rooms, four art galleries, Turkish baths and a 36-foot high vaulted rotunda. The house took many years to complete because Mr. Clark continued to make changes to make it grander, stretching to 1912. Clark spent as much as $7 million on the house, three times what it would cost to build Yankee Stadium a decade later. Clark’s oldest daughter, Louise Amelia Andree Clark died of meningitis at Rangeley Lake, Maine where she was summering with her mother and sister. Ms. Andree Clark had been a Girl Scout and in 1920 Mr. Clark donated 135 acres in Briarcliff, N.Y. for the first national Girl Scout camp in her honor. Mr. Clark died on March 2, 1925 at the age of 86 of pneumonia. President Coolidge sent flowers at the time of his death. Ms. Anna Clark and Huguette were given three years to vacate the house (until Huguette reached the age of 21) but they moved soon after his death. A buyer was eventually found for the house for less than $3 million. Mr. Clark’s extensive art collection was gifted to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. where his wife and daughters paid for a wing to house his collection. The Metropolitan Museum in New York was his first choice but they would not agree to keep it together so the collection went to the Corcoran. Apparently, some of the paintings in the collection were misattributed. 

Ms. Huguette Clark practiced music and art after her father’s death and seven of her paintings were shown at the Corcoran from April to May 1929. In 1928 she became engaged to William Gower. Mr. Gower was a law student who had worked for her father. Mr. Gower had graduated from Trinity School in New York City and Princeton University in 1925. Ms. Clark married Mr. Gower at the Clark’s Santa Barbara home, Bellesguardo. The Clarks made their residence in New York City, with her mother in the same location. They divorced two years later after Ms. Clark and her mother moved to Reno, Nev. for the summer so she could establish residency. No alimony was paid. In 1931 there were rumors that she was engaged to an Irish nobleman, the Duke of Leinster, but he denied the claim. Ms. Clark soon disappeared from society pages.

There has been a good deal of speculation as to why Ms. Clark purchased Le Beau Chateau. The most popular story is that she bought it during an engagement but that her husband died on the honeymoon, but there is no record of a second marriage. Ms. Clark’s great half-nephew, Andre Baeyens, reported that his mother claimed she bought it as “sort of a bomb shelter” during the Cold War. In any case, she never made use of the property. In 2010 MSNBC reported that she was 103 and lived in either a nursing home or a hospital (relatives said they didn’t know) and all communication went through her lawyer, Wallace Bock.

In 2010 the property was listed for sale for $24 million (having been reduced from $34 million). In May of that year the estate hosted the “Spring Awakening” which was presented as a fundraiser for the Summer Theatre of New Canaan. The event was a “Broadway inspired table show” where various designers decorated different rooms in the house to correspond to Broadway shows (including Mame and Bye Bye Birdie). In April 2014 the property was sold for $14,300,000 to the current owners. The most noticeable difference in the exterior is that the bricks have been painted white.