overextended in 1880, Clark and his partners became the new owners of both the mine and the mill through foreclosure.Butte would produce 24,000 tons of silver, but its 11 million tons of copper would earn its nickname, “theRichest Hill on Earth.”
If not already a millionaire, W.A. was well on his way. The thirty-seven-year-old banker and industrialist had an opportunity to see the future in 1876, representing the Montana Territory as its orator at the world’s fair in Philadelphia. Despite another worldwide economic depression, nine million visitors celebrated the centennial of the Declaration of Independence by touring the latest wonders of the world: Bell’s telephone and Remington’s typewriter, Heinz ketchup and Hires root beer.
Fairgoers could walk up stairs inside a lookout tower to see the entire grounds of the Centennial Exhibition. The tower was part of an unfinished statue brought from Paris. The artist planned the statue as a gift from the French Republic to the United States, and was seeking subscriptions to pay for a pedestal. The work was to be a colossal metallic structure of a woman, fifteen stories tall, but all that was on display was her gigantic right forearm holding a torch and flame. The artist was Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, the sculpture was
Liberty Enlightening the World
, and this was America’s first glimpse of its Statue of Liberty.
With a fifty-cent ticket, W.A. could climb the stairs to the torch’s balcony, looking out on the industrial wonders of the world, touching Lady Liberty’s smooth French skin of copper.
A PALACE AND A TEMPLE
B UTTE WAS NO LONGER a muddy, isolated town. As copper was changing the wider world, it transformed Butte. The same railroad that began taking copper out also brought culture in. By the end of the century, Butte’s Grand Opera House would be visited by Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt. Its Broadway Theatre, one of many in town, claimed to be the largest west of Chicago. W.A. was Butte’s dynamo, building its first water supply system, organizing the electric light company and the street railway, and owning
The Butte Miner
newspaper.
He needed the finest house in town, particularly as he began to seek political office. From 1884 to 1888, he supervised every detail of the construction of a thirty-four-room red-brick Victorian mansion with a steeply sloping French mansard roof and dormer windows. Begun in a time of depressed copper prices, the home was W.A.’s testament to confidence in the copper camp. When asked why he was building in Butte, he answered with loyalty, “Because I owe it to Butte. I have made money there.”
This first Clark mansion was designed to confer social status, and it was easily the most expensive home in town, costing a quarter of a million dollars, or about $6 million today. The plaster on the walls was painted in swirls of gold in the entryway, bronze in the octagonal reception room, silver in the dining room, and copper in the billiard room. The woodwork was of fine oak, Cuban mahogany, sycamore, bird’s-eye maple, and rosewood. W.A.’s silhouette was sculpted above the mantel, and frescoes on the library ceiling represented the arts: literature, architecture, painting, and music. The Clark home didn’t have just a staircase; it had the “staircase of nations,” with each wood panel representing one nation of the world, leading up to jeweled-glass windows large enough for a church. On the third floor was a ballroom sixty-two feet long.
The house had another special feature, one that was required for anindustrialist in that era. On the second floor, hidden in the second bedroom, known as the family bedroom, was a closet that served as apanic room. This closet had a call box that could be used to alert the police, the fire department, or the hospital. This was no extravagance: Wealthy men received threats of all kinds. In 1889, for example, W.A. received a letter threatening his life if he did not pay the writer
If not already a millionaire, W.A. was well on his way. The thirty-seven-year-old banker and industrialist had an opportunity to see the future in 1876, representing the Montana Territory as its orator at the world’s fair in Philadelphia. Despite another worldwide economic depression, nine million visitors celebrated the centennial of the Declaration of Independence by touring the latest wonders of the world: Bell’s telephone and Remington’s typewriter, Heinz ketchup and Hires root beer.
Fairgoers could walk up stairs inside a lookout tower to see the entire grounds of the Centennial Exhibition. The tower was part of an unfinished statue brought from Paris. The artist planned the statue as a gift from the French Republic to the United States, and was seeking subscriptions to pay for a pedestal. The work was to be a colossal metallic structure of a woman, fifteen stories tall, but all that was on display was her gigantic right forearm holding a torch and flame. The artist was Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, the sculpture was
Liberty Enlightening the World
, and this was America’s first glimpse of its Statue of Liberty.
With a fifty-cent ticket, W.A. could climb the stairs to the torch’s balcony, looking out on the industrial wonders of the world, touching Lady Liberty’s smooth French skin of copper.
A PALACE AND A TEMPLE
B UTTE WAS NO LONGER a muddy, isolated town. As copper was changing the wider world, it transformed Butte. The same railroad that began taking copper out also brought culture in. By the end of the century, Butte’s Grand Opera House would be visited by Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt. Its Broadway Theatre, one of many in town, claimed to be the largest west of Chicago. W.A. was Butte’s dynamo, building its first water supply system, organizing the electric light company and the street railway, and owning
The Butte Miner
newspaper.
He needed the finest house in town, particularly as he began to seek political office. From 1884 to 1888, he supervised every detail of the construction of a thirty-four-room red-brick Victorian mansion with a steeply sloping French mansard roof and dormer windows. Begun in a time of depressed copper prices, the home was W.A.’s testament to confidence in the copper camp. When asked why he was building in Butte, he answered with loyalty, “Because I owe it to Butte. I have made money there.”
This first Clark mansion was designed to confer social status, and it was easily the most expensive home in town, costing a quarter of a million dollars, or about $6 million today. The plaster on the walls was painted in swirls of gold in the entryway, bronze in the octagonal reception room, silver in the dining room, and copper in the billiard room. The woodwork was of fine oak, Cuban mahogany, sycamore, bird’s-eye maple, and rosewood. W.A.’s silhouette was sculpted above the mantel, and frescoes on the library ceiling represented the arts: literature, architecture, painting, and music. The Clark home didn’t have just a staircase; it had the “staircase of nations,” with each wood panel representing one nation of the world, leading up to jeweled-glass windows large enough for a church. On the third floor was a ballroom sixty-two feet long.
The house had another special feature, one that was required for anindustrialist in that era. On the second floor, hidden in the second bedroom, known as the family bedroom, was a closet that served as apanic room. This closet had a call box that could be used to alert the police, the fire department, or the hospital. This was no extravagance: Wealthy men received threats of all kinds. In 1889, for example, W.A. received a letter threatening his life if he did not pay the writer
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