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 New developments
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| Subway tracks. 3:15 PM. Photo: JH. |
Thursday, June 23, 2011. Warm and overcast, yesterday with a brief but heavy rain in the early evening followed by muggy weather.
Last night Sir Evelyn and Lady de Rothschild held a cocktail reception at their apartment overlooking the East River and Roosevelt Island for donors to the Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial known as Four Freedoms Park that broke ground last year and will be completed next year.
Originally known as Blackwell’s Island, and then later Welfare Island, it was renamed after our 32nd President in 1973 under the administrations of Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Mayor John V. Lindsay. The memorial, which will occupy four acres on the southern tip of the island directly across the UN Building, was designed in 1974 by architect Louis Kahn. |
| The under-construction Four Freedoms Park at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, commemorating President Franklin D. Roosevelt. |
| Tobie, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. and William vanden Heuvel. |
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The memorial will include a monumental stair, a broad, sloped lawn, allees of linden trees – 150 of them now sitting in New Jersey waiting to be transferred and planted; plus an open air plaza surrounded on three sides by closely spaced granite column upon which the Four Freedoms will be carved. President Roosevelt outlined those “essential” freedoms in a speech before Congress on January 6, 1941: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from fear and freedom from want. These four freedoms were also incorporated into the founding charter of the United Nations.
William vanden Heuvel, the lawyer, diplomat, political adviser and founder of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, New York has been a moving force behind the actualization of the park along with Tobie Roosevelt, the widow of Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. Lord and Lady Rothschild made an original donation of $250,000, and last night announced another $250,000 donation. So far $48 million has been raised with another $4 million to go. |
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| The maquette of the Four Freedoms Park. |
| Mock-up of the finished park in relationship to Manhattan. |
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The last will and testament of Huguette Clark, the 104-year-old reclusive mining heiress who died last month, was filed yesterday by the law firm of Holland & Knight. Ms. Clark’s executors are her lawyer for the past 15 years, Wallace Bock and her accountant for the past 30 years, Irving Kamsler. The estate has an approximate value of about $400 million.
The will calls for the establishment of a foundation named the Bellosguardo Foundation “for the primary purpose of fostering and promoting the arts,” a very convenient catch-all term which will greatly benefit whomever is selected to run it.
Bellosguardo is the name of Clark’s 24-acre oceanside estate in Santa Barbara which was built in 1933 after a previous house owned by her father who died in 1925 was demolished.
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| Huguette, age 17. |
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| Last picture taken of her -- 80 years ago when she was 24. |
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The house, which Ms. Clark remarkably had not visited since her mother died in 1963, will serve as a permanent museum to house her “extensive collection of fine art, rare books, musical instruments and other exhibition quality objects.”
The house is currently assigned an estimated value of $100 million. Also assigned to the foundation are the two apartments at 407 Fifth Avenue in New York acquired in the late 1920s after her father’s mansion at 962 Fifth Avenue was sold in 1927, two years after his death.
These apartments also contain several valuable pieces of art including works by John Singer Sargent, Degas, Renoir and William Merritt Chase as well as more than fifty of Ms. Clark’s own paintings, as well as numerous musical instruments collected mainly by her mother Anna Clark, including a Stradivarius.
One painting, from Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies” series, was designated for the Corcoran Gallery in Washington. Last publicly displayed in 1907, coincidentally, the year of Huguette Clark’s birth, the picture was acquired by her in 1930 through the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris, from the painter.
The Corcoran was also the recipient of the extensive art collection of the heiress’ father William A. Clark, one-time senator from Montana who made his fortune in copper and gold mining, railroads, and was the largest landowner in Nevada. The senator, because of his enormous wealth and steely personality, was regarded as a player in his day – which lasted for more than fifty years.
Senator Clark had originally wanted his art collection to go to the Metropolitan Museum but insisted that it have its own wing and never be broken up. His demands were not met and he made a deal more to his liking with the Corcoran.
Also bequeathed in Ms. Clark’s will was $1 million to Beth Israel hospital where she resided since the late 1980s.
She also left cash bequests to a small group of individuals including her physician, her former assistant, her accountant Mr. Kamsler and her attorney Mr. Bock, as well as property managers and other staff members.
Her other prized holding was a large doll collection which went in its entirely (“including dollhouses and doll clothing”) to her longtime private nurse Hadassah Peri whom she met in 1991 after she moved into the hospital. Ms. Peri is said to have spent more time with Ms. Clark over the past two decades of her life than anyone and was regarded as a “loyal friend and companion.”
The balance of the estate, after bequests to the Foundation and Corcoran, which account for about 75% of the assets, and after payment of estate taxes is to be divided between Ms. Peri and Ms. Clark’s goddaughter Wanda Styka, whose father was an artist long associated with the Clark family.
Although the Clark family was well known in both business and social circles in the first quarter of the 20th century, after the death of Senator Clark in 1925 at age 86, their public prominence ebbed, so that by the time an intrepid reporter from msnbc.com discovered her existence last year, she was virtually unknown to the world.
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| Anna, Andree and Senator Clark at the Easter Parade. |
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She was born in 1907, to Anna and William Clark. Her father was 68 at the time of her birth and her mother was about 22. Anna Clark was the second wife of Senator Clark whose first wife and mother of five of his children, had died in the early 1890s.
Although he was a senator, back in the days before senators were elected by popular vote, Clark was later charged with having “bought” the seat – not an uncommon practice in his time – and later forced out of office by his peers who regarded him as (especially) corrupt. Mark Twain who knew him considered him low-life “as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag.” He felt Senator Clark’s “proper place in life was a penitentiary with a chain and ball on his leg.” No doubt Mr. Clemens had more facts at hand about the matter although they are not known to this writer.
A farmboy from Pennyslvania who later migrated to Missouri, William Andrews Clark first went to Montana with a mule drawn cart of supplies to sell to miners. This was the era when the great mining fortune of America were first prospected and claimed. Clark turned that freight into a great fortune which included picking up prospector's claims for a small sum and reaping massive profits from them for decades thereafter.
When all of his children were young he settled multimillion dollar fortunes on each. One of his sons William A. Clark Jr. who lived in Los Angeles, acquired the largest private collection of Oscar Wilde memorabilia, letters and manuscripts in the world, which he housed (and remains housed) in a museum he built near downtown Los Angeles and which he bequeathed to UCLA. Another son died at an early age and a daughter Andree, by his second marriage to Anna, was born two years before Huguette, and died at age 17 of meningitis.
The Senator moved to New York in the late 1890s, when many of the tycoons and robber barons of the age were migrating to the city. In the fashion of his peers at the time, he built a huge mansion on Fifth Avenue on a lot 77 X 100 feet, on the northesast corner of 77th Street. The house which was completed by the time of Huguette’s birth was said to have cost about $7 million (or about 30 times that in today’s currency).
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| The huge mansion on Fifth Avenue on a lot 77 X 100 feet, on the northesast corner of 77th Street. |
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| Bellosguardo in Santa Barbara. |
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| The house in New Canaan. |
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The senator’s relationship with his architects and his builders of the house grew more contentious as he expanded his ideas to create what became a palace with 121 rooms, 31 bathrooms, a theater, an indoor swimming pool, art galleries, several dining rooms, and 26 servants rooms. Believing he was being grossly overcharged on many items, he purchased his own quarry which delivered the limestone for the exterior, as well as copper from his own mines, refined in his own refineries and wood from his own forests.
Although his castle was widely criticized as garish and grotesque, many believed it to be splendid and beautiful. However, when he died in 1925, his own immediate family at home were Huguette and her mother, neither of whom ever felt comfortable in such an extravagantly oversized dwelling. It was sold by the estate two years later in 1927 to a well known New York developer at the time, Anthony Campagna, for a little under $3 million. The house itself was regarded as an albatross to prospective developers who said the plot of land was worth more without it because of the immense cost of demolishing and removing its detritus. Campagna, undeterred, took it down and hired architect Rosario Candela to build what became 960 Fifth Avenue, still regarded as one of the great luxury cooperative apartment buildings in Manhattan.
Huguette and her mother moved to the apartments five blocks south on 72nd and Fifth which were then occupied for the next half century. Huguette, who was briefly married between ages 21 and 23, lived in the smaller apartment (although hardly small by normal standards) above her mother’s which occupied an entire floor of the building.
The daughter’s isolation and eccentricity began early in her life. It was regarded by those who knew her as “you know, she’s just being Huguette.” She spoke French much of the time and spoke English with a French accent. Her mother who was of French descent grew up in the western United States. Although the mother and daughter lived close by each other, and shared family friends – Mrs. Clark was godmother to the family’s physician and regularly saw members of that family -- neither had much to do with the other Clark family members (there are great-great-grandchildren of the Senator still living).
Her mother was a patron of musicians and often purchased musical instruments for them. Huguette saw or spoke very often to the wife of her father’s doctor until the doctor’s wife died in 1987, (the doctor died in 1957) although it is not known if she had any friends outside of this small circle. Huguette remained in touch with that family physician’s son and daughter until their mother died. She is recalled as “sweet,” quiet and soft-spoken (with a French accent).
The intense isolation of the woman which began at least when she was in her early 20s was somehow never questioned in terms of motivation. It was always “well, you know Huguette.” However, it is clear that she was not actually anti-social but rather withdrawn.
The question remains: why? In today’s world the investigation of that question would naturally begin in the child’s home. We know from witnesses that she and the mother lived close to each other until the mother’s death and that their relationship witnessed by others was not hostile or alienated. The mother is also described by her goddaughter as a “thoughtful, kind, loving, fascinating French lady with impeccable taste and a great love for music,” who “supported and bought rare instruments for many well known musicians of the period.”
Lani, as Mrs. Clark was known to her goddaughter, was very motherly toward the godchild, “very much involved with her growing up, and “was very supportive of (the girl’s) needs and wants.”
Huguette, the goddaughter recalls, lived in the apartment above her mother and “was very much alone by her choice.” She was very close to the goddaughter’s mother and would phone her often. She remained close to the family until she moved into the hospital and then all communication was cut-off.
Why did this woman with all the money in the world as well as the fabulous real estate, isolate herself from the world? And why did she finally, at an advance age leave all this behind, and move into a hospital? She never went near the house in New Canaan, Connecticut although it was always maintained as if ready for someone’s occupancy – as was the property in Santa Barbara which went unvisited after mother’s death 48 years ago.
She was not in ill-health as we know, so why the hospital? For one thing she was safely under the care of members of the medical profession – whom she learned in childhood were protective and caring, and the closest people to her outside of her mother for most of her young adulthood.
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| Andree Clark, Senator Clark, Huguette, taken in 1916. The only physical evidence of their relationship is this single photograph of her with her father and her sister when Huguette was 11. |
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Secure, and protected. But from what? From whom? Although she clearly liked people (she could trust), except for her very early two-year marriage she was never known to have another close relationship other than the aforementioned friends of family. So it can be safely assumed her need to isolate began very early in the girl’s life.
What was her relationship with her father like? Nothing is known, at least nothing that has been revealed in writing. The only physical evidence of their relationship is the single photograph of her with her father and her sister Andree taken in 1916 when Huguetete was eleven, her sister was thirteen, and the father was 72.
If you look at this image in terms of body language, you can see the elder daughter’s leaning in toward her father – her left arm comfortably in his, while the younger daughter stands stiffly straight, feet tightly together, arms straight by her side; her father’s left hand grasping her left upper arm while she stands stiffly apart, never touching him. We can see her physical proximity to her father is unlike that of her sister. Was it of the moment and unremarkable, or is that tension in the child’s body language? And if so, what does it denote?
We also know that Senator Clark “adopted” the girls’ mother when she was not much older than Huguette is in this photograph. We know this caused a great deal of talk amongst the senator’s peers, and none of it in his favor. We also know from the man’s history that he was used to corrupt activities to gain power, to get his way in business and no doubt, in life. He was a powerful man, powerful in his family and powerful in his legacy. So powerful that it may explain or at least refer to WHY; why his seventh child, his daughter who outlived him by 86 years, kept his properties perfectly maintained, as he would have for himself, despite the fact that she never even visited them.
It may explain why in her dotage she sought refuge in an institution where people are thought to be protected from unsafe, dangerous or life-threatening physical situations. We do know that this was the focus of this woman from youth to very old age.
Whatever the “threat” that motivated Huguette in her life choices, it was real enough to last a lifetime. It could easily be assumed to have been traumatic in nature, the kind of trauma that begins at the beginning of one’s life. “Oh you know, she’s just being Huguette” was always the basic explanation, meaning nothing; or everything, depending. The irony is that her long life and her great fortune stood in the way of relief that came only with her last breath.
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