The Biltmore Estate, North Carolina
In the late 1880s, twenty-five-year-old George Vanderbilt, the grandson of industrialist Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, went horseback riding through the Blue Ridge Mountains in Asheville, North Carolina. As he crested the top of a hill and gazed out over the peaks and valleys of the land below him, he made a decision: on this piece of earth, he was going to build a chateau. He purchased 125,000 acres of land and enlisted his friend, Richard Morris Hunt, to be the architect.
Six years and over 1,000 laborers later, the Biltmore Estate would become the largest privately owned mansion in America. Today, the Biltmore Estate has downsized from 125,000 acres to a meager 8,000 (HA), which includes the mansion, gardens, farmyard, lake, and winery. The house itself has over four acres of floor space and is filled with 250 rooms, 34 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces.
In 1898, George Vanderbilt and his wife Edith Stuyvesant Dresser (descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, the first governor of New York) came to live at the estate. Their only child, Cornelia, was born at and grew up at the Biltmore.
The house itself encompasses four stories with a facade that spans 780 square feet. Architect Richard Hunt modeled the chateau after the style of the French Renaissance, giving it a steeply pitched roof and a stair tower. Its scale is astounding, encompassing over 11 million bricks.
George was a collector and connoisseur of art, architecture, language, music, books, and horticulture. While Biltmore Estate was being constructed, he traveled throughout Europe and Asia collecting paintings, porcelains, bronzes, carpets, and furniture for his new home.
Artwork by Renoir, Sargent and Whistler adorn the walls and ceiling (including Renoir’s “Young Algerian Girl” in the Chippendale Room); golden silk covers the walls of Edith’s bedroom; three samurai swords that George collected on a trip to Japan are nestled within a magnificent display of porcelain; and one of the chess and gaming tables belonged to Napolean. Fifteenth-century armor is on display next to the eight sixteenth-century Flemish tapestries that hang in the Banquet Hall. Fifty Persian and Oriental rugs cover the marble and oak floors throughout the home.
The Banquet Hall, which features a pipe organ and an oak dining table set for 64 people
Our tour of the Biltmore began outside the front lawn, where we took in our first views of the estate before moving into the house.
We toured the house at our own leisurely pace, taking about two hours to see everything on display. The tour starts on the main floor in the glass Atrium filled with plants and orchids.
The tour then sweeps through a sitting room, opens up to a massive balcony overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains, and ventures through the library.
George Vanderbilt’s library encompasses 22,000 volumes. At the age of 12, George started keeping a list of “Books I Have Read.” By his death, he had logged 3,159 books, which means he averaged 81 books a year! His collection ranges in subject from American and European fiction to world history, religion, philosophy, art, and architecture. In 1905, it is rumored that author Henry James visited the Biltmore and complained that his room was “half a mile away from the mile-long library!”
The library with Ming Dynasty urns once used as goldfish bowls 
When I saw the library, I was amazed at how uniform and beautiful the books were. I later learned that George would often ship his books to a bookbinder that would return his books covered in Moroccan leather with gilt lettering and decoration. After the library, we swept up the grand staircase (which has 102 steps!) and explored the luxurious bedrooms and areas where guests played parlor games and had afternoon tea.
Downstairs, we ventured into the basement to see where the servants kept the house running, with a huge kitchen, specialty pantries, two laundry rooms, and refrigeration systems.
When Biltmore House was built, it was fully heated and had a central electric system. It also had a fire alarm system, an electrical call box for servants, two elevators, and elaborate (and rare) indoor plumbing for all 34 bedrooms. It even had a telephone, which was quite extraordinary in the early 1900s! Apart from marveling at the technology in the house, we also loved seeing the recreational pleasures the Biltmore House had to offer–a huge indoor swimming pool, a bowling alley, and a gym complete with luxurious changing rooms for patrons.
The swimming pool 
The bowling alley
After exploring the house, we took a break at the Stable Cafe, where we ate lunch in the cozy booth of a converted horse stall. For the next hour or so, we then explored the gift stores nearby before heading to the gardens.
The Biltmore House is indisputably the focal point of visiting the Biltmore Estate, but visitors would be remiss if they skipped the gardens.
The gardens of the Biltmore were dreamed up by Frederick Law Olmsted, the estate’s landscape designer and architect of New York City’s Central Park. He is known today as the father of American landscape architecture.
The grounds that Olmsted created include a pleasure garden, a major arboretum, a Conservatory, a nursery, and a systematically managed forest. When George bought the piece of land the Biltmore inhabits, it had previously been cleared for timber. Olmsted trained a corps of men to improve the existing woodland and in just a few years, they had planted over 300 acres with white pine trees. In 1914, Edith Vanderbilt sold approximately 86,700 acres of the estate’s forested land to the U.S. government to create Pisgah National Forest.
The four-acre Victorian walled garden features 50,000 tulips that bloom in the springtime and All-American roses in warmer months. It reminded me of the walled garden that Matt and I visited on our trip to Kylemore Abbey in Galway, Ireland last summer.
Inside the glass-and-brick Conservatory at the lower end of the walled gardens, we spent a full hour exploring rooms full of exotic plants. The large Palm House contains ferns, palms, and other foliage plants.
The annexes consist of a “cool house,” a “hot house,” and orchid house (in my opinion, there was no difference in temperature between the cool and hot houses–both were equally warm on this brisk March day!) The total heated space under the roof is 7,000 square feet.
This beautiful Bolivian flowering tree reminded me of New Zealand’s pohutukawa trees
Our final excursion at the Biltmore Estate, we took a trip to the farmyard and winery for a complimentary wine tasting. At the farmyard, we met several of the Biltmore’s horses, which you can ride through the estate on horseback trips. The winery and vineyard is located in Antler Hill Village, just down the road from the House and Gardens.
We taste-tested seven of the twenty handcrafted vintages at the wine bar and left with several bottles to take home to enjoy later.
Today, the Biltmore Estate is still family-owned and teems with over 2,000 employees. It is a special and remarkable place. We visited on the cusp of spring, just as the cherry blossoms and forsythia bushes were starting to appear in the gardens. I imagine, though, that it is beautiful and spectacular at all seasons. If you are planning a visit to the Biltmore soon, you are in for a wonderful adventure. If this post has inspired you to visit Asheville, please leave me a comment below and let me know! And finally, be sure to subscribe in the right-hand column by leaving your email address so you can stay up-to-date with my latest travel tips and advice! Cheers, friends!
