See Inside The Clark Mansion, a 9-story, 121-room mansion in New York City that survived for just 30 years.

The William A. Clark House, sometimes known as “Clark’s Folly,” was a house on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It was situated at 962 Fifth Avenue, on the northeast corner of its junction with East 77th Street. It was destroyed in 1927 and replaced with a stately apartment complex (960 Fifth Avenue), which is still standing today. Images courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune, written by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr., is a best-selling history of Huguette Clark and her family that includes a description of the mansion’s construction.

In 1897, William A. Clark, a prosperous Montanan politician and businessman, hired Lord, Hewlett & Hull of New York City to construct the mansion. After many court battles, the $7 million (about $192,075,000 in 2019) mansion was finally finished in 1911. With 121 rooms, 31 bathrooms, 4 art galleries, a swimming pool, a hidden garage, and a special subterranean train line for bringing in coal for heating, the mansion had it all.

According to reports, Clark spent $50,000 (about $1,372,000 in 2019) to purchase a quarry in New Hampshire and constructed a train to extract the stone needed for the structure. In order to produce the bronze fittings, he also purchased a foundry that employed 200 people. For the inside, he also imported elements of old French châteaux, marble from Italy, and oak from Sherwood Forest in England.

The home faced 77th Street and had a lengthy facade that rose to a high mansard roof. The home included a magnificent four-story tower that was visible from practically anyplace in Central Park. The tower featured an open pergola above a three-story-tall inward-curving arch.

Inside

The nine-story mansion included several Greek marble columns, laundry rooms on the upper floor, and Turkish baths beneath the main floor. The banquet area included a fifteen-foot-wide Numidian marble fireplace that featured life-size representations of Neptune and Diana. The 121 chambers were adorned with artwork and tapestries from the Middle Ages. There were 170 carved panels in the breakfast room, no two of which were same.