The Biltmore House, located in Asheville, North Carolina, is a grand Chateauesque-style mansion built between 1889 and 1895. It was designed by Richard Morris Hunt for George Washington Vanderbilt II and his wife, Edith Vanderbilt. The house, named after the Vanderbilt family’s ancestral home in the Netherlands, is the largest private residence in the United States, with a 178,926 square foot interior floor space. The estate once spanned 125,000 acres and included Biltmore Village, a small railroad town turned medieval-style village, landscaped gardens, a conservatory, and a stable wing. The estate has since been reduced to 8,000 acres, which now include tourist amenities such as museums, restaurants, a winery, a luxury hotel, shops, and additional support facilities.
The Biltmore House exhibits various French Chateaux design elements, including a facade clad in Indiana limestone with Gothic details, leaded glass windows, towers with steeply pitched hipped slate roofs, wall dormers, an elevator tower, and a large conservatory. The interior features luxurious finishes, such as carved woodwork, intricate plaster details, electric lighting and steam heat, multiple fireplaces, guest rooms, a grand banquet hall, bedrooms for staff, a two-story library, and antiques and decorations sourced from the Vanderbilt’s international excursions and antique dealers.
The Biltmore House opened for public tours in 1930 and has since expanded its offerings to include more areas of the estate. During World War II, the Biltmore House was utilized to store 62 paintings and 17 sculptures from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as a safe haven for these important works in the event of a foreign invasion. The estate was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1963 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.
Today, the Biltmore Estate is still owned by the Cecil family, descendants of George and Edith Vanderbilt’s only child, Cornelia Vanderbilt Cecil. The estate is now a major tourist attraction, welcoming nearly 2 million visitors every year.