The Biltmore House is a grand and massive Chateauesque-style mansion built between 1889 and 1895 by Richard Morris Hunt for George Washington Vanderbilt II and his wife, Edith Vanderbilt. The house is the largest private residence in the United States, with a 178,926 square foot interior floor space. It was named for De Bilt, the place where the Vanderbilt family came from in the Netherlands, and originally he estate was 125,000 acres, which included Mount Pisgah, much of the present Pisgah National Forest Biltmore Village, and the upscale Asheville suburbs of Biltmore Forest and Biltmore Park. Today, with a large part of the land parceled off and sold, 86,700 acres of reforested land surrounding Mount Pisgah is still owned by the estate.
Before becoming part of the estate, the land was in poor condition, and Frederick Law Olmsted was responsible for reforesting large areas and creating a park-like setting with natural and artificial landscaped areas surrounding the house. Part of the estate included Biltmore Village, which was designed to resemble a rural French medieval village, with a fan-shaped street grid centering around the Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls. Biltmore Village has since been annexed by the city of Asheville, and today it features many shops, restaurants, and tourist accommodations.
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. The house features a facade clad in Indiana Limestone, with lots of Gothic details, leaded glass windows, casement windows, and double-hung windows, towers with steeply pitched hipped slate roofs and decorative copper cresting, ornate wall dormers, and an elevator tower on one side of the staircase.
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 house features antiques and decorations sourced from the Vanderbilts’ many international excursions and antique dealers, as well as lots of art.
The 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 Biltmore Estate was designated as a National Historic Landmark 1963, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. Today, it is a major tourist attraction, seeing nearly 2 million visitors every year.