New Canaan There & Then: The Story of Huguette Clark and Le Beau Chateau

‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli and Dawn Sterner. 

For years the rumors about the 52-acre property at 104 Dan’s Highway were rampant.

The purported owner bought it as a wedding gift for a husband who died on their honeymoon. It served as a family bomb shelter in the event of nuclear war. It was owned by the CIA as a safe house. It was owned by a daughter of Donald Trump resulting from his illicit affair with Tricia Nixon (OK the last one was totally made up; for the record AI would never do that).

The actual owner of the property, who purchased it in 1951 and died still owning it in 2015, was Huguette Marcelle Clarke, famous mostly for her reclusiveness. She called it Le Beau Chateau. And she never once stepped foot in the house after she bought it.

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The list of wealthy recluses in America is a fascinating chapter in our history. Overnight wealth will do that. Take John Wendell II, the scion of the “Weird Wendells.” Wendell was a real estate owner and developer exclusively focused on the island of Manhattan. 

He built his fortune on four core principles: never sell, never mortgage, never repair, and when in doubt fall back on the euphemism that Manhattan premium real estate prices (in his case Broadway) would inexorably move uptown 10 blocks a decade.

Unfortunately for his family, Wendell imposed his personal reclusiveness on them as well. The Wendell house was in a commercial district, surrounded by shops and hotels, and affording little privacy. Electricity, telephones, automobiles? No need. He could have also used a fence, as passersby often pressed their noses against the windows to catch a glimpse of the strange Wendel family.

Far more notable was Howard Hughes, one of the world’s first billionaires. Hughes was a legendary playboy and aviator, which he parlayed into leading roles in several industries beyond aerospace, including real estate (at one time he owned nearly half of the casinos in Las Vegas), and Hollywood, where he owned RKO Studios.

Later in life Hughes became America’s most famous recluse, dropping out of sight from family, friends and even his most senior and trusted employees. Periodically there would be sightings of Hughes around the country, not unlike the Elvis sightings that sprouted after the singer’s death (although Elvis was most definitely dead, while Hughes was not). 

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Huguette (pronounced “oo-GET”) Clark was born in 1906 into one of the country’s richest families. Her father, William Clark, was a Montana copper magnate who rode to riches during the rapid expansion of the American West beginning in the late 19th century. 

He also rode to infamy. Elected to the U.S. Senate, he was forced to resign when he was accused of having paid bribes to get the seat in the first place. He was soundly reelected. 

Even more shockingly, in 1904 U.S. Sen. Clark, by then a widower with adult children, announced his secret marriage to a woman 39 years his junior, Huguette’s mother Anna LaChapelle.

William Clark died in 1925, leaving an estate estimated as large as $300 million. Huguette received a substantial inheritance. By then she was the only child of her father’s second marriage; her younger sister Andree had died from meningitis in 1919 at the age of 16 (one year later, Senator Clark donated 135 acres in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. for a Girl Scout camp named in her honor; it became Camp Andree Clark, one of the earliest major national Girl Scout camps).

In 1928, at age 22, Huguette married W. Thomas Welchel, a law student who came from a considerably less wealthy background. The marriage lasted only two years. The couple divorced in 1930, and Huguette never remarried.

The death of her mother in 1963 was another major turning point for Huguette. By then, she had become increasingly withdrawn. Although she owned several spectacular properties, she preferred the comfort of her New York City apartment, the entire eighth floor of 907 Fifth Avenue, at the corner of Fifth and 72nd Street.

Clark’s most famous possession was not Le Beau Chateau but Bellosguardo, her enormous estate in Santa Barbara with sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean. The property had been acquired by her father and was Huguette’s favorite home.

Why did Huguette purchase another large property in New Canaan? In their entertaining account of her life, Empty Mansions, co-authors Paul Dedman and Huguette’s cousin Paul Clark Newell write that:

“In 1951, [at the height of the Korean War] the Clarks’ chauffeur drove Huguette and Anna out to New Canaan, a Connecticut suburb and an hour north of New York City, and one of the most affluent communities in the nation. Huguette later explained to her man Friday, Chris Sattler, that it had been her mother’s idea to have a refuge for family and friends in case of a Russian attack on New York.”

So the bomb shelter rumor was spot-on after all . . . 

Ironically the seller of the property was, like Huguette’s father, a U.S. Senator. That Senator, David Aiken Reed from Pennsylvania, built the chateau in 1938. 

While Huguette never visited Le Beau Chateau again, she nonetheless constructed a two-story addition there immediately after purchasing the property. As with the original chateau, she never furnished the addition.

Huguette Clark died in 2011 at the age of 104. Her death triggered a battle royal over her estate within the extended Clark family, as Huguette was the only remaining child of the senator.

Three years later, in 2014, Le Beau Chateau was purchased from the estate by Reed Krakoff, a fashion designer and former Coach executive, for $14.3 million. 

Huguette Clark bought her New Canaan mansion in 1951, expanded it, never furnished it, and never came back. 

And that is perhaps the most enduring mystery of Le Beau Chateau: Bombs or no bombs, Huguette spent a fortune building and improving a place to escape the world, and then spent the rest of her life escaping the world without ever needing to use it.