The Biltmore Estate is a grand and massive mansion that was built in the Chateauesque style between 1889 and 1895 by architect Richard Morris Hunt for George Vanderbilt II and his wife, Edith Vanderbilt. The estate is located in Asheville, North Carolina, and is the largest private residence in the United States, with a 178,926 square foot interior floor space. The house was named after the town of De Bilt, where the Vanderbilt family originally came from in the Netherlands.
The estate was designed to be a self-sufficient country estate and originally sat at the center of a 125,000 acre estate that included Mount Pisgah, much of the present Pisgah National Forest, Biltmore Village, and the upscale Asheville suburbs of Biltmore Forest and Biltmore Park. Much of the land has been sold off to help run the estate, with 86,700 acres of reforested land surrounding Mount Pisgah being sold to the United States government in 1915. Prior to becoming part of the estate, the land was home to small farms and was in poor condition. Frederick Law Olmsted designed the landscape of the estate, 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 a small railroad town 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. 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. Today, Biltmore Village has many shops, restaurants, and tourist accommodations and has been annexed by the city of Asheville.
The Biltmore House features elements from various historic French Chateaux and has a facade clad in Indiana limestone with Gothic details, leaded glass windows, casement windows, and double-hung windows. The house features towers with steeply pitched hipped slate roofs and decorative copper cresting, ornate wall dormers, an elevator tower, a large conservatory known as the Winter Garden, and a loggia. The interiors feature carved woodwork, intricate plaster details, electric lighting and steam heat, multiple fireplaces, a large kitchen and laundry in the basement, many guest rooms, a massive four-story chandelier in the grand staircase, a basement swimming pool, bowling alley, and gymnasium, a large grand banquet hall, bedrooms for staff, and a two-story library.
The estate was opened for public tours in 1930 and has since expanded to include more areas of the house and estate. During World War II, the house was utilized to store 62 paintings and 17 sculptures from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The 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 estate is utilized as a museum and open for tours, with the remaining acres comprising the modern grounds of the estate having been developed with tourist amenities. The estate is a major tourist attraction, seeing nearly 2 million visitors every year.