![]() ![]() No sir, the doorman told Dedman, he hadn't seen her for 20 years or more. And at 907 Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park, there were not one but three apartments in her name. She had a bigger place, Bellosguardo, in Santa Barbara, California, where she hadn't been seen for 50 years. It turned out that the house belonged to Huguette Clark – a woman who hadn't set foot in it since buying it in 1951. This was in 2009, a year into the great recession, and "the beautiful castle" was on offer at $24m – down from the original asking price of $35m. One of the houses he chanced upon was Le Beau Château, a 22-room pile set in 52 acres of prime Connecticut. Indeed, the book starts out with its main author, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Bill Dedman, trawling the web looking at houses he " really couldn't afford". I n case you couldn't tell from the title, or the soft-focus shot of a mammoth slab of French baroque on the cover, Empty Mansions is a piece of property porn. ![]()
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