William Andrews Clark Jr.

William Andrews Clark Jr. was the most devoted maker of beauty of all the men I have ever anywhere known. . . . One day he found himself with a rare and priceless library and no safe place to put it; he thereupon called in Mr. Robert D. Farquhar and instructed him to build a jewel box for the protection of his treasures . . . . And Mr. Farquhar did as he was told with a result that will fill you with astonishment if you will visit the Library.

—Ernest Carroll Moore, Provost and Vice-President of UCLA

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  • 1877

    birth of second son of William Andrews Clark (b. 1839; copper baron and U. S. senator) and Katherine Louise Stauffer Clark (b. 1844) in Deer Lodge, Montana

  • 1893

    death of mother Kate Clark

  • 1899

    graduation from the University of Virginia with a bachelor’s degree in law

  • 1900

    admittance to the bar of Montana and the Federal Courts

  • 1900–07

    partnership in the law firm Clark & Roote in Butte, Montana

  • 1901

    marriage to Mabel Duffield Foster (b. 1880) on June 19

  • 1902

    birth of William Andrews Clark III on December 2

  • 1903

    death of wife Mabel Clark on New Year’s Day from septicemia

  • 1907

    marriage to Alice McManus (b. 1883) of Virginia City, Nevada, and move to Los Angeles

  • 1910

    purchase of the 1906, three-lot, West Adams house of David C. McCan (1884–1929), the scion of a New Orleans industrial family

  • 1911–15

    acquisition of five additional contiguous lots east of the residence

  • 1917

    start of extensive book collecting

  • 1918

    death of second wife Alice Clark

  • 1919

    founding of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and hiring of Robert E. Cowan as consultant on book-buying and compiler of printed catalogs of library holdings

  • 1920

    publication of first two library catalogs: Early English Literature (pre-1700) and Modern English Literature (post-1700)

  • 1925

    death of father William Andrews Clark from pneumonia

  • 1926

    retirement from active business and completion of freestanding library building—known today as the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library—designed by architect Robert D. Farquhar, dedicated to Clark’s father, and deeded to the “Southern Branch of the University of California,” the predecessor of UCLA

  • 1928

    purchase of remaining property, comprising a city block bounded by West Adams Boulevard, West 25th Street, Gramercy Place, and Cimarron Street— nearly five acres

  • 1932

    death of son William Andrews Clark III from a plane crash in Arizona

  • 1934

    heart attack and death of William Andrews Clark Jr. at his summer home, Mowitza Lodge, at Salmon Lake, Montana, and interment in a Farquhar-designed mausoleum in the Hollywood Cemetery (now Hollywood Forever Cemetery)