A new era for an old estate

VIDEO: CBS Sunday Morning visits Bellosguardo

THERE HAVE BEEN three homes on the magisterial 23.5-acre bluff overlooking East Beach in Santa Barbara.

It was called Booth’s Point when George Booth built a Victorian there in the 1880s. In 1903 the William Miller Graham family used their Oklahoma oil fortune to construct a lavish new Italianate mansion they called Villa Bellosguardo. In 1923 the Graham home was bought by Senator W.A. Clark, the Montana Copper King, and later torn down and rebuilt in the 1930s as a French chateau for Anna and Huguette Clark.

The Clarks last visited in 1953. Their summer home remained dark, but meticulously maintained, for 70 years before it finally began to reopen to visitors last year. In her will, Huguette Clark left Bellosguardo — “beautiful overlook” in Italian — to a public foundation to become a center for the arts, a mission still in its early stages. But now the public can visit Bellosguardo in small groups of 10. To get on the email list, sign up at bellosguardo.org.