The Biltmore Estate is a massive Chateauesque-style mansion located in Asheville, North Carolina, built between 1889 and 1895 for George Washington Vanderbilt II and his wife, Edith Vanderbilt. Designed by Richard Morris Hunt, the house is the largest private residence in the United States, with over 178,900 square feet of interior floor space. The estate was named after De Bilt, the place where the Vanderbilt family originated in the Netherlands. The estate originally sat in the center of a 125,000-acre estate, which included Mount Pisgah, Pisgah National Forest Biltmore Village, and the upscale Asheville suburbs of Biltmore Forest and Biltmore Park. Today, many of these areas have been parceled off and sold to help run the estate, with the remaining 8,000 acres being developed for tourist amenities.
The massive mansion was designed to look like a French-style self-sufficient country estate, using elements from various historic French Chateaux, including the Chateau Royal de Blois, Chateau de Chenonceau, Chateau de Chambord, and Waddesdon Manor in England. The house’s facade is made of Indiana limestone, with Gothic details, leaded glass windows, casement windows, double-hung windows, steeply pitched hipped slate roofs, decorative copper cresting, ornate wall dormers, and towers. The interior of the house is opulent, with luxury finishes, including carved woodwork, intricate plaster details, electric lighting and steam heat, multiple fireplaces, and antiques and decorations from the Vanderbilts’ many international excursions and antique dealers. The house also has 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.
In addition to the mansion, the estate has many other notable features, including a walled garden with rusticate granite walls, a large rose garden, gardener’s cottage, and a conservatory featuring various tropical plants. The estate also has a large South Terrace enclosed by a rusticated retaining wall, an Italian Garden with fountains and Italian-style sculptures, a natural Shrub Garden and vine-covered arbor, a grassy knoll with unobstructed views of the surrounding mountains, and the Biltmore Bass Pond, an enlarged former mill pond known for its stocked fish, boathouse, and waterfall. The grounds also include the Biltmore Village, which was redesigned to resemble a rural French medieval village, and features Norman-style cottages, various shops, a train station, a hospital, and a school for workers’ families.
The house was opened for public tours in 1930 and has expanded over time to feature more areas of the house and estate. 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, descendants of George and Edith Vanderbilt’s only child, Cornelia Vanderbilt Cecil, and is today utilized as a museum and open to tours. The estate today is a major tourist attraction, seeing nearly two million visitors every year.