When we went to North Carolina earlier this year for a family wedding, we spent some time in Asheville. One of the major tourist attractions in North Carolina is located outside of Asheville - the Biltmore Estate built by George W. Vanderbilt III, the grandson of one of the richest men of his day, Cornelius Vanderbilt. My wife had read up on the Biltmore Estate before we went and she saw that they had a great rose garden and conservatory on the grounds and she was adamant that we go there while we were in Asheville.
When George Vanderbilt came to Asheville in 1888 to visit his mother who was spending the summer in the Blue Ridge Mountains, he envisioned a place of his own so grand and splendid that it would be called the finest home in America. Vanderbilt bought 125,000 acres of land south of Asheville and construction on the home began in 1889. The construction crews had their own brick factory on-site, as well as a massive woodworking shop that employed artisans from all over the country. A three mile long railroad spur to the construction site fed materials for the building of the home.
When it was finished in 1895, it was easily the largest home in America - 250 rooms - 34 of which were bedrooms for family, guests and servants - 43 bathrooms and 65 fireplaces. The house had an indoor swimming pool, a bowling alley, a gymnasium and a game room that featured card tables and a pool table. It also featured a long patio deck off the back of the house that afforded some stunning vistas of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Vanderbilt entertained family members for the first time on Christmas Eve in 1895.
The grounds of the estate - as well as much of the wooded area surrounding the estate - were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York's Central Park and referred to as the father of American landscaping. Olmsted designed the long lawns, gardens, fountains and green space that surrounded the property. During construction of the estate, nearly 1000 acres were cleared for building plots - with much of the cleared timber used for wood inside the mansion and other estate buildings - and for farmland to feed the workers, and later, the Vanderbilt family. Under Vanderbilt's guidance, Olmsted replanted 300 acres of white pine trees in 1891, and in 1892 he hired Gifford Pinchot, a young forester who eventually would go on to become the first head of the U.S. Forest Service, to come in and work on a concept of managing forest growth while making a profit on the sale of timber for the Vanderbilt's. When George Vanderbilt passed away in 1914 at the age of 51, his wife Edith sold nearly 90,000 acres for less than $5 bucks an acre to the U.S. Government for the establishment of the Pisgah National Forest.
A couple weeks before we went to North Carolina, my wife had me look up the particulars for going to the Biltmore Estate. While we weren't too whippy on actually seeing the interior of the mansion itself, we were very interesting in the gardens and the conservatory. However, they didn't have an admission just for the outdoor area, you had to go to through the mansion first. And it wasn't cheap - normal admission price was $75 per person. However, we were able to get $20 off each ticket for ordering online over a week in advance. That helped take some of the sting out of the overall price of going there. (We found that admission prices vary depending upon the day of the week or the time you want to visit.)
We made reservations to go to Biltmore on a Tuesday morning around 10 a.m. It turns out that we really didn't need to make the reservations. We went in to the Cedarcliff Ave. entrance off Biltmore Ave. south of Asheville (see map) and took the long, meandering road through a tree-lined road to the check point building of the estate. After they scanned our tickets that we had printed out, we carried on to the parking area. They have shuttle buses that can take you from the parking lots to the front entrance of the mansion, or it's a short walk up a sidewalk that comes out on the front lawn of the estate.
After a quick walk-thru of the horse barn/turned tourist trap next to the mansion, we entered the building and started out on a self-guided tour through the Vanderbilt home. (The audio tour was $10.95 for the earphones and device.) The Biltmore mansion has been open to the public since 1930 when George Vanderbilt's daughter Cornelia Cecil thought it would be a boost to the local economy during the Great Depression. The Cecil family oversees the operations at Biltmore which now include a winery, hotels and shopping areas within the estate.
I'm not going to bore you with a bunch of photos of the interior, but there were some interesting things to see in the place, especially how people lived in luxury at the start of the 20th century. The main entrance featured a beautiful arboretum - not the one we were interested in seeing - but a much smaller one that featured a number of ferns and vines that grew with the help of the natural light coming in the large windows. I was impressed with the stonework inside and out of the building wondering how in the heck workers were able to lift some of the stone pieces to such heights to set them in place.
Right off the bat, the mansion reminded me of the one time I visited the Hearst Castle, also known as San Simeon, located along the California coast. There were dozens of large tapestries that hung from the walls in the vast rooms located in the mansion, similar to the ones William Randolph Hearst had in his home that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. The lighting throughout the house was subdued using the same lighting methods they had in the 1920's.
I was particularly interested in the kitchen areas that were in the mansion. There were various kitchens of various sizes throughout the house that ranged from a smaller one for when it was just the immediate family in the house, to a kitchen that was large enough to accommodate large numbers of people, to a kitchen that was used just for the servants and help. I was interested in the lay-out of the kitchens, what types of ovens or stoves that were used, and what type of utensils that they used to make the food.
There was a sizable crowd there that day and we were forced to stop or slow down on our route through the mansion. I finally said that I'd had enough of seeing expansive "his and hers" bedrooms, servants quarters, dining rooms, billiard rooms and libraries in the house, so we sort of cut out of the walking tour as quick as we could.
Off to the side of the house was the garden area that featured a walkway covered in vines and greenery along the South Terrace. It was a very warm day in Western North Carolina and the shade was a welcome relief.
Down the steps from the wall that featured the overhanging vines was the rose garden. The beautiful sculpted garden featured walkways that meandered around dozens of different varieties of rose bushes. We grow roses at our house - we have over two dozen rose bushes - and this was the place that we were particularly interested in checking out during our visit to the Biltmore Estate.
The conservatory was located just beyond the spacious rose garden. It was basically a brick building with long greenhouse buildings in the back of the place. It was warm and humid inside the building, but it was comfortable enough to walk around. Protecting the environment is a big thing at the Biltmore Estate and they have six acres of solar panels that heat water and provide electricity for different areas of the estate.
There were dozens - no, probably more like hundreds - of tropical plants, palm trees and delicate flowering plants in the arboretum. The floral scents emanating from the building were pleasant. There were a bunch of beautiful plants that we weren't familiar with and we had a fun time identifying some of the ones we didn't know much about.
Back out to the rose garden, we spent a long time walking around looking for rose bushes that we had at home, as well as rose bushes that were pretty and we made note of to look up when we got home. There was a deep orange rose bushes - Orange Sensation - that we fell in love with and made a note to see if we could find one to plant in our backyard to go along with the other colors we already have.
Unfortunately, many of the rose bushes were just past their first prime growth of the season. (Many of ours back home in Iowa hadn't even bloomed yet by the time we left for North Carolina.) Still, we were able to stop and literally "smell the roses" on many of the plants that they had in what had to be the largest rose garden we've ever seen.
We went through some of the other outdoor gardens they had at the Biltmore Estates - the Italian Garden, the shrub garden, and the azalea garden (which didn't have many - if any - blooms left. We walked along the front yard to the main fountain and then up to the wall that faced the front of the mansion to get this picture. We'd had enough and we walked back to our car, but we were sort of forced to drive through the rest of the estate to see the equestrian area, the hotel and inn on the grounds, the shopping area and the winery. We were more than ready to get out of there by the time we drove back into Asheville.
A number of movies have been filmed at the Biltmore mansion including scenes from Forrest Gump, Ri¢hie Ri¢h, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, and one of my all-time favorite films - the very underrated, but critically acclaimed Being There that starred Peter Sellers in his last role in a full-featured movie. I suppose Biltmore was fine enough to visit, but we were much more interested in the grounds, gardens and conservatory than we were with the mansion. We felt it was a little expensive for what it was - even with the $20 per person reduction in price for buying tickets online more than seven days of the visit. If we could have skipped the tour through the mansion and gone directly to the gardens, we probably would have liked it much more. It took us about 3 hours to see what we saw at the Biltmore Estate. But, we also found that the crowds diminished tremendously after 1 p.m. If you want to go, you may want to go in the afternoon. (There are also guided tours through the estate that you can buy in addition to the regular admission tickets - and we understand there is a very nice Christmas lights tour of the mansion.) There's a lot to do in and around Asheville, but the Biltmore Estate is probably the best thing to see in the area. That is, if you're into that type of thing.
Comments