Local Businesses - Biltmore Estate
The Biltmore House is a French Renaissance-style mansion near Asheville, North Carolina, built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1888 and 1895. It is the largest privately owned home in the United States, at 175,000 square feet. Still owned by the family, it is operated as a museum.
In the 1880s, at the height of the Gilded Age, George Washington Vanderbilt II, a son of William Henry Vanderbilt, began to make regular visits with his mother to the Asheville area. He loved the scenery and climate so much that he decided to create his own winter estate in the area, as his older brothers and sisters had built opulent summer houses in places such as Newport, Rhode Island and Hyde Park, New York.
Vanderbilt's idea was to replicate the working estates of Europe. He commissioned Richard Morris Hunt, who had previously designed houses for various family members, to design the house in imitation of several Loire Valley chateaux, including the Chateau de Blois. Wanting the best, Vanderbilt also employed Frederick Law Olmsted to design the grounds, including the deliberately rustic three-mile Approach Road, and Gifford Pinchot to manage the forests. Intending that the estate could be self-supporting, Vanderbilt set up scientific forestry programs, poultry farms, cattle farms, hog farms and a dairy. The estate included its own village and even a church. Family members and friends invited from all over the United States and beyond came to experience the opulent estate with the splendor of Olmsted's sweet-smelling gardens, rich foods at the 64 seat banquet table, and the utter beauty of Vanderbilt's mountainous grounds.
Vanderbilt paid little attention to the family business or his own investments, and the construction and upkeep of Biltmore depleted much of his inheritance. After Vanderbilt died of complications from an appendectomy in 1914, his widow sold much of the original 125,000 acres (506 km²) to the federal government to become Pisgah National Forest. The estate includes approximately 8,000 acres today and is split in half by the French Broad River. It is owned today by The Biltmore Company, which is controlled by Vanderbilt's grandson, William A.V. Cecil. In 1963, it was designated a National Historic Landmark.