The Biltmore

This garden room’s skylight was the size of modern McMansion roofs.

After a bit of hesitation about sorta not wanting to gawk at rich people’s lives, which we generally have no interest in, we decided to go to the Biltmore Estate outside of Asheville. The Biltmore Estate is the absurdly large ‘country home’ of George Vanderbilt.

George was the grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the “Commodore”. Starting with $100 from his parents to buy a boat, he became a founder of the modern steamship industry .. first by dominating the waters around NYC, then on to Europe and the West Coast via Panama. If that weren’t enough, he put together the first large scale, complex railroad network in the country. He was mean, ruthless and a brilliant businessman — creating efficiency, reliability, and cheaper fares that were unknown before him. The richest man in the US when he died, he left an estate of over $100M.

A 20,000 book library with a ceiling George imported from an Venecian villa.

His first son, William Vanderbilt, doubled his inherited wealth in only eight years before he died which made him the richest man on the planet. But more fun was that he became infamous for saying “The public be damned!” to a reporter when asked about why he didn’t keep a rail service open that was losing money. This became the “let them eat cake” moment for the Progressive movement to bring control to the monopolistic practices rampant in the gilded age.

As the 3rd generation scion of the guy who actually earned a living and his similarly ambitious son, George seems to have inherited none of his grandfather’s ambition and chose to live an aristocratic life of learning and travel. In his 51 years of life, he took 60 overseas trips in an era of steamship travel and read over 3,000 books that he dutifully recorded in his diary.

The 3,000sf formal dining room with Washington state antlers!

Living in NY, he had an idea of building a quiet life in the countryside, so like most of us might do with such a dream, he proceeded to buy over 100,000 acres of North Carolina land and build a 175,000 … yes, 175,000 … square foot house. In 1898, his new wife Edith joined him at the estate.

Born with a silver spoon they may have been, but they did seem to have a much kinder spirit than The Commodore and treated staff well by the standards of the time. They even threw an annual Christmas party, which their descendants who narrated the audio guide seemed to have been impressed by.

We did not expect to like the house but it is truly an amazing place. The main floor rooms are amazingly large scale, filled with art from around the world, and the design screams ‘I have a god awful amount of money and want you to be impressed’.

In truly an upstairs/downstairs ‘situation’, the basement (40,000 square feet) was dedicated to 60 live-in staff (with private quarters) and food, laundry etc. Vanderbilt built this to be a modern home and it had central heating, electric elevators, full plumbing, modern laundry room, etc.

Indoor swimming pool that was used for ‘therapy’, not exercise. Not sure what that means.

And of course, because every home should have these things, they had a bowling alley, indoor swimming pool, full gym, and over a dozen changing rooms for people to prepare for their swimming therapy. No co-ed swimming allowed.

They also (of course they did) hired Frederick Law Olmsted of Central Park design fame to turn the immediate area around the house into a park. ‘Immediate area’ meaning 8,000 acres. The grounds are wonderful and a good place for a daily horse ride from your stable of 40 horses.

The common space between George’s and Edith’s bedrooms where they would have ‘intimate’ conversations.

George and Edith had a strong sense of preservation, and after George’s death, Edith transferred over 100,00 acres to the US Federal government, which became Pisgath National Forest .. the first national forest in the United States.

The empire and fortune that The Commodore built did not last. If George and Edith lived the decadent leisure life, their daughter (Cornelia) took it a step further. After having two children, she got divorced, abandoned the estate, moved to Europe, and dyed her hair pink before marrying a waiter she met while on a date with someone else. By 1973, 100 years after Cornelius died, there were no Vanderbilt descendant millionaires to be found.

Dinah making the Azelea bush look good. It was prime flower season at scale in their gardens.

The family was hit hard by the depression, and began house tours as a way of raising money to sustain the Estate. In the 1970s, the family got serious about this and 50 years later, the Biltmore is a $200 Million/year business and over 1,000,000 people a year visit this pretty astounding house. I’m not sure how old Cornelius would feel about his long term legacy being a tourism business of a 2nd home.