Huguette Clark, Heiress, Dead at 104

One of the last survivors of a rough-and-tumble age of robber barons, enormous Manhattan mansions, and high-society heiresses has died. Huguette Clark was 104 and died in Beth Israel Medical Center, the latest in a string of hospitals in which she’s lived for 20 years. A reclusive figure for years, Clark was the daughter of William Andrews Clark, a poor Pennsylvanian who made a Horatio Alger-like fortune in copper in the old West and later purchased a Montana Senate seat; he was worth some $3 billion in today’s dollars. After a brief marriage in 1928, she largely disappeared from social circles, vanishing nearly completely from view into her Fifth Avenue abode until her finances became the subject of journalistic and police investigations in 2010. The cause of death was not reported, although Clark—who was surrounded by private aides until her death—was said to be lucid and physically able until nearly her death.