Huguette Clark’s Gilded Age Time Capsule Estate in Santa Barbara

Copper heiress Huguette Clark died in 2011 at the age of 104, having spent the last 22 years of her life in a New York hospital, even though she owned massive estates in Manhattan, Connecticut, and Santa Barbara. She hadn’t visited the Santa Barbara property, Bellosguardo, since the 1950s, but she paid about $40,000 a month for a full staff to keep the place in peak shape. Only employees (and a couple others) have gone in or out in decades, but the house is eerily well-kept: the LA Times calls it “a still life of old California — with a 1933 Cadillac limousine parked in the garage — and a snapshot of a bygone era when the wealthy could effectively purchase a piece of the sea [bygone??] … Lemon trees are pruned to the leaf, and ‘you could eat off the floor,’ the mayor said.” And it’s supposed to be opened to the public–Clark’s will has finally been settled, and it establishes a nonprofit Bellosguardo Foundation to “foster and promote the arts,” with the estate as its centerpiece.