The Biltmore House, located in Asheville, North Carolina, is a Chateauesque-style mansion built between 1889 and 1895. The mansion is the largest private residence in the United States, with a 178,926 square foot (16,622.8 square meter) interior floor space. The house was designed by Richard Morris Hunt for George Washington Vanderbilt II and his wife, Edith Vanderbilt, who had decided to build a French-style self-sufficient country estate in Asheville.
The estate was named after De Bilt, the place where the Vanderbilt family came from in the Netherlands. It originally sat at the center of a 125,000 acre (195 square mile or 510 square kilometer) estate which included Mount Pisgah, much of the present Pisgah National Forest Biltmore Village, and the upscale Asheville suburbs of Biltmore Forest and Biltmore Park. However, much of the land has been parceled off and sold to help assist with keeping the estate running, with 86,700 acres of reforested land surrounding Mount Pisgah being sold to the United States government in 1915. The landscape of the estate was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who reforested large areas and created a park-like setting with natural and artificial landscaped areas surrounding the house.
Part of the estate included Biltmore Village, which was formerly known as Best. The village was redesigned to resemble a rural French medieval village, with a fan-shaped street grid centering around the Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls, which was attended regularly by the Vanderbilt family. The village also features Norman-style cottages, various shops, a train station, a hospital, and a school for the families of workers at the estate. The portion of the estate bordering Biltmore Village features an iconic gatehouse, which melds the cottage-like materials of the village with the more imposing design language of the mansion inside the estate.
The grounds around the estate include a walled garden with rusticate granite walls, a large rose garden, gardener’s cottage, and a conservatory featuring various tropical plants that would not naturally grow in the local climate. In front of the house is a large lawn, which runs east to the Esplanade, a stone wall with a series of stairs and ramps that switchback to an upper lawn. The Biltmore House features elements from various historic French Chateaux, including the stair tower and hipped roofs of the Chateau Royal de Blois, as well as various elements from the Chateau de Chenonceau, Chateau de Chambord, also in France, and Waddesdon Manor in England.
Inside, the house features luxurious finishes, including carved woodwork, intricate plaster details, electric lighting and steam heat, multiple fireplaces, a large kitchen and laundry in the basement, many guest rooms, a basement swimming pool, bowling alley, and gymnasium, a large grand banquet hall, bedrooms for staff, and a two-story library.
The Biltmore House was opened for public tours in 1930, which has, over time, expanded in scale to feature more areas of the house and estate. The house was utilized to store 62 paintings and 17 sculptures from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1942, with Asheville believed to be a safe haven for them in the event that the United States was invaded by a foreign military. Biltmore Estate was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1963, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. The estate is still owned by the Cecil family, the descendants of Cornelia Vanderbilt Cecil, George and Edith Vanderbilt’s only child.
Today, the Biltmore Estate is a major tourist attraction, seeing nearly 2 million visitors every year. The estate features tourist amenities such as museums, restaurants, a winery, a luxury hotel, shops, and additional support facilities. The Biltmore House is still utilized as a museum and is open to tours.