The Biltmore Estate — A Castle Mansion in the Carolinas
Asheville, NC
In the rolling hills and abundant forests of Asheville, NC, sits an unexpected site, The Biltmore, a Gilded Age mansion, the largest privately owned home then or now. Built in the French Renaissance Style, the Biltmore is made out of Indiana limestone, and this castle mansion styled itself more as a mega castle. There’s a village nearby in the once 125,000 now 8,000 acre estate complete with a post office, rental cottages, shops, doctor’s office, a school, and a church. The grounds itself were designed by none other than Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted, then at the tail end of his career and wanting to make Biltmore the cap of his life’s work.
Inside Biltmore
Inside the massive 175,000 square foot mansion, the Biltmore rose four stories and because it’s 175,000 square feet, it has everything a mansion should have but more of it. The Biltmore has a 10,000 volume library; a gymnasium with Victorian exercise equipment like pins and an antique rowing machine; an indoor swimming pool (in 1895!); a billiard room; a cigar room; a Winter Garden conservatory; an absolutely massive Banquet Hall with seventy foot wood barrel vaulted ceilings (!); his and hers master’s bedrooms; servant quarters; a 102 step Grand Staircase; and since this was Victorian times when propriety was everything, a Bachelor’s wing where single men would stay well away from the single ladies for the night.
George Vanderbilt
George Vanderbilt was a 26-year-old bachelor when he built his mega Bachelor’s Pad. He had inherited $250 million, an astronomical sum now but even more so in the 19th century, from his father and grandfather who had built their family’s railroad empire. With his inheritance, he went to Asheville, NC, even back then a popular vacation spot, and built his colossal home. The area around the Biltmore looks bucolic and untouched now, but during Vanderbilt’s time, the area had been stripped of its trees and filled with hard-scrabble farms. In fact, the novel and movie Cold Mountain is set in the original 175,000 square foot Vanderbilt grounds (now the Pequot National Forest). “I will wait for you in Cold Mountain,” says Nicole Kidman in the movie, but Vanderbilt thought differently. One of the first reforestation initiatives, Vanderbilt tasked Olmstead to reforest the land resulting in what we see today: a new old growth forest.
The Biltmore Estate too was state-of-the-art for its time. Today’s conveniences were super luxuries at the time including central heating, running water, and electricity. The power generation room at the Biltmore was built to handle both AC and DC since Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla was still battling out for which type of electricity would be standard. For the record, George Westinghouse won, who had earlier bought Tesla’s AC patents.
His grounds too, Vanderbilt wanted to be self-supporting. New farms were built in other parts of his estate along with animal farms and the aforementioned village to run it. Vanderbilt eventually married Edith Stuyvesant Dresser, and they had just one daughter together. You would think the three of them would get lonely in a 175,000 square foot home, but they always had guests over including luminaries of the time like author Edith Wharton, other Vanderbilt family members, and Presidents McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, and Wilson. There was also their army of servants to keep them company.
The Biltmore Estate Today
Today, the Biltmore Estate is a tourist hot spot. Over one million people visit every year to the reduced 8,000 acre estate to see the grounds and tour the estate that Vanderbilt built. With the nearby Pequot National Forest, it makes for a particularly breathtaking site. The Estate has since built an inn simply called the Inn on Biltmore Estate. The Antler Hill Village is still there, and the church is now called the Cathedral of All Souls. Guests can also try Biltmore wines. A working vineyard and winery are on the property, and the Biltmore sells their own house wines.
Christmastime is a special time at the Biltmore. Every year, the Biltmore hosts the Annual Christmas Tree Raising Celebration where they display the largest indoor tree in a private residence in the world. They raise a forty-foot tree inside the Banquet Hall and then decorate it with thousands of Christmas decorations, but that’s not the only place they put up Christmas decorations. The entire Estate is decked out for the holidays including even more Christmas trees, garlands in the halls, and poinsettias in the Winter Garden. There’s also caroling in the village, a Gingerbread house building event, and on Christmas Eve Day, a wine tasting and relaxation event inside the Biltmore.
George Vanderbilt spent his entire inheritance on the Biltmore, but what a way to go! Actually, all the Vanderbilts had spent their fortunes, and with the railroad business going south culminating in the federal takeover that created Amtrak, they had lost the industry that birthed their riches. By the sixth generation, the late Gloria Vanderbilt told her son CNN anchor Anderson Cooper to not expect an inheritance. “My mom’s made it clear to me there’s no trust fund,” Cooper told Howard Stern on his radio show. Don’t feel bad for the Vanderbilts, though, they’re still rich and the family still owns the Biltmore. With the popularity of the Biltmore with tourists, the Vanderbilts are surely building up their fortunes once again.
