With 34 rooms, a sixty-four-foot ballroom, a billiard room, a chapel, a library and nine fireplaces, the
Copper King Mansion was a fitting home for a man who had amassed a $50 million (in 1900 dollars) by the late nineteenth century. Built in the Romanesque Revival Victorian architectural style, absolutely no expense was spared in its construction, with many varieties of wood used to finish interior rooms, Tiffany glass, frescoed ceilings, imported tile and hand carved mantles over each fireplace. The stairway, also hand carved, required four years of painstaking labor to complete. Built between 1884 and 1888, the red-brick Victorian mansion is one of the grandest ever built in the state.
Since 1953 the house has been operated as a
Bed & Breakfast. Guided tours are also available through the summer.
When the writers of the American Guide book, Montana: A State Guide Book, passed through Butte in 1939 they must have been at least somewhat impressed with the Clark Mansion, as they gave it a good sized paragraph. This is what they had to say about it:
3. The W. A. CLARK HOUSE (private), W. Granite and N. Idaho Sts.
is a three-story red brick mansion in the style of the i88o's, with white stone ornamentation. Small porticoes with slender columns and elaborate gingerbread decorations face the street on two sides. The walls have many angles and the lines of the steep roof are broken by numerous
gables and dormer windows. Because the grounds slope toward Granite Street, the building seems higher in front than in the rear. William Andrews Clark (1839-1925) was president of the Montana State Constitutional Conventions of 1884 and 1889. In his efforts to control the Democratic party in Montana, he was constantly opposed by Marcus Daly. He was twice refused the seat in the U. S. Senate to which he claimed election, but after a third election in 1901 he was at length seated.
He served throughout his term, and then retired.
From Montana: a state guide book, Page 140
Apparently there have been two NRHP plaques at the Clark Mansion over the years. Following are the texts from both, present plaque first and earlier plaque last.
CLARK MANSION
William Andrews Clark already was a successful businessman in Montana Territory before he came to Butte in 1872, having been involved in freighting, wholesale trade, and banking in Bannack, Virginia City and Deer Lodge. When he decided to enter the new field of silver and copper mining, the thorough Clark typically attended the Columbia School of Mines for a year. He built Butte's first smelter, and its first water system and electrical plant. In 1884, the year he chaired the territory's second constitutional convention (ending in Montana's second unsuccessful attempt at statehood), he also began construction of this mansion. Its three floors and 30 rooms would take four years and $260,000 to complete, by which time Clark was fighting the "War of the Copper Kings" after his defeat as territorial delegate to Congress. This mansion's "modem Elizabethan" architectural style was Clark's favorite. Throughout the interior are rich touches of fine hardwoods, including mahogany, cherry, laurel, sycamore, oak and both birdseye and curly maple. The mansion's nine fireplaces are adorned with imported color tiles, each capped by a hand-carved mantle in hardwood to match the room's décor.
Self-made multimillionaire William Clark spent an estimated $260,000 on the construction of this splendid thirty-two-room residence between 1884 and 1888. Though an astounding sum, that figure represented only a half-day’s earnings out of Clark’s seventeen-million-dollar a month income. The irregular architectural plan, a classic of Queen Anne styling, features porticos, arched windows, and elaborate decorative elements. The interior boasts finishing in a different wood for each room, frescoed ceilings, and Tiffany stained glass windows and chandeliers. The intricately carved staircase took four years to complete and was dismantled and displayed at the 1904 Worlds’ Fair in St. Louis.
From the NRHP plaque at the building