Please leave at least 45 minutes to travel from the front gate to the parking facilities.
This detail came in the confirmation email we received after purchasing tickets to the Biltmore, an historic estate built by George Washington Vanderbilt II in 1895, located in Asheville, North Carolina. I read through it twice thinking it was maybe a typo, but then remembered that the property sits on 87,000 acres of land (down from its original 125,000). It also attracts upwards of one million visitors a year. Between the size and spread of the grounds and the daily visitor traffic—a parade of cars and RVs slowly winding their way up and around the narrow access road into the grounds--it occurred to me that maybe 45 minutes was generous. What does that look like in December when the massive halls are decked for the holidays? This could be your own personal Oregon trail—pack rations.
More than a few people suggested we visit the Biltmore while we were on vacation in Asheville. We were on the fence. This kind of grand old mansion is not entirely unique to us being from New England. Our version consists of a series of massive “summer houses” in Newport, Rhode Island. These sprawling, ornate residences occupy prominent pieces of land along Rhode Island’s majestic coastline. They have names like Rosecliff and Chateau-sur-Mer and The Breakers. We call our house Casa de 30-Year Rate.
Like the Biltmore, the Newport mansions were constructed in the late-nineteenth century period known as the Gilded Age. This was a time when families like the Vanderbilts, Carnegies, and Rockefellers, controlled much of the nation’s industrial wealth, paid zero taxes (!!!), and were frequently mistaken for the Monopoly guy with his top hat and monocle. I have encouraged my fair share of guests to put a visit to Newport on their list. So when one of our friends in the Asheville area described the Biltmore as “Newport on steroids,” we figured it was probably worth the trip.
George Vanderbilt had visited North Carolina on many occasions and enjoyed the area so much he decided to purchase land to build a summer home or what he characterized as his “little mountain escape.” After securing more than 700 parcels of land, Vanderbilt hired Richard Morris Hunt, a renowned New York architect who had already designed homes for other family members, to create The Biltmore. Specifically, Vanderbilt wanted his new house done in the Chateauesque style: design inspired by French Renaissance elements such as turrets, pitched roofs, and ornamental sculptures. Hunt delivered and then some.
The exterior of the Biltmore is architecturally dazzling with additional features such as flowering rosettes and trefoils. Vanderbilt’s initials along with representations of the family crest appear in places along the façade of the upper stories. And of course, what would a chateau be in America or abroad without its share of gargoyles, thrusting their spiny necks and leering their grotesque smiles down on guests who have just arrived from Manhattan ready to enjoy some rest and relaxation at George and Edith’s charming “little” summer place!
The Biltmore actually took six years to complete (from 1889-1895). The construction history along with the deeply intricate design nuances of the estate are too many to capture in anything under 100 pages. But here is a small sample:
Construction required about 32,000 bricks per day. A brick kiln and woodworking factory were established on site to meet the demand of upwards of 1,000 workers and 60 stonemasons
Vanderbilt had a three-mile railroad line installed to transport materials to the site (as one does!)
The Biltmore’s stables were 12,000 sq ft and housed Vanderbilt’s prized driving horses. The carriage house just opposite the stables stored twenty carriages along with room for any additional guest carriages
Sixteen chimneys are visible over the sharply pitched roof, which is covered with slate tiles individually affixed to the roof
There are 250 rooms in the house, including 35 bedrooms for family and guests; 43 bathrooms (that’s a lot of TP!); three kitchens; and the house also contains 65 fireplaces
The Vanderbilts opened the estate to the public in 1930 in an attempt to strengthen their finances and as a gesture to help the city of Asheville attract tourists. It closed during World War II. In 1942 the Vanderbilts allowed 62 paintings and 17 sculptures from the National Gallery of Art in D.C. to be stored at the estate in the event of an attack on the capital
Vanderbilt hired prominent landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead to sculpt the formidable grounds. You might know Olmstead as the guy who, like, made Central Park in New York City
Opulence, decadence, extravagance, artistry, the worst excesses of capitalism proudly and unapologetically on display—just as there seems to be no shortage of astonishing aspects to the Biltmore Estate, there is also a rolling Thesaurus of descriptors to try and encapsulate its overall character. As I walked from room to room with my audio tour device pressed against my ear, I wondered if “home” was one of them.
Our relationship with domestic spaces is one of constant evolution and renegotiation. Class and race and gender and economic stratifications in George Vanderbilt’s day dictated the kind of segregation that existed under a single roof. Female staff (housemaids and laundresses etc.) occupied the fourth floor; male staff such as butlers and valets had quarters over the stables. On one floor we noticed a long hallway trailing out of sight toward the back of the house. As we craned our necks over the roped off area, a nearby docent told us that the passage connected to the servants’ quarters in a way that allowed them to access family and guest rooms without being seen in keeping with accepted practice that the embodied, physical labor it took to actually run the house should remain properly mystified and largely invisible whenever possible.
The Banquet Hall, with its table to seat 64 and triple fireplace, was strictly for dining. You were welcome to read in the Library, a two-floor space containing 10,000 volumes of books (Seriously, George? Challenge accepted!). The Living Hall—a formal hall and sitting space—would never be confused with whatever was supposed to go on in The Billiard Room located in the Bachelor Wing. This was an area of the house that featured a Gun Room (nope), a Smoking Room (hard nope), and a very firm “No Girls Allowed” policy (Fine with me. I’ll be in the Library working my way through those sweet first editions of Shakespeare).
In other words, family and guests moved and occupied rooms and areas of the house according to the conventions of the space, not the other way around. This concept is mostly foreign to us now. I know plenty of people who use their “formal dining room” as kid-craft-project-junk-makeshift-workspace central; who run businesses from their kitchen counters; who do movie night in the upstairs “nook” outside their bedroom; and who write their novel in the laundry room because it’s the only space in the house where they can hear themselves think (and anyone with kids knows that the laundry chore is family kryptonite). In our modern houses we sprawl, we co-opt these spaces, we endlessly reconfigure to meet our changing needs, tastes, and circumstances—the guest bedroom sacrificed for remote schooling during the pandemic, the garage now a rec room thanks to quarantine.
While it was relatively easy to walk around and imagine what a typical day might be like at the Biltmore either as a family member or guest, it was harder to envision it as a really lived in place. I admired the artwork, the fine elements like the 24-karat gold leaf wallpaper in one room (admired behind glass of course), but I struggled to find intimacy, warmth, traces of the bonds that develop between people who identify as a family unit. All that wealth and power and prestige and nearly unfettered resources at Vanderbilt’s command poured into this truly awesome place. Everything you could possibly want in a house except the thing that money can’t buy and neither 10,000 stonemasons nor the most brilliant architect alive can give you: home.