Biltmore

Our weekend getaway to Asheville included a trip to the Biltmore Estate. We’ve been several times, though never at Christmas, and the house never fails to amaze. We toured the house, the gardens, the winery … because, of course … and loved every inch of it, so here’s the story of Biltmore along with some of the photos we took….

In the 1880s, at the height of the Gilded Age, George Washington Vanderbilt II began visiting Asheville, North Carolina. He loved the scenery and climate so much that he decided to build a little summer place in what he dubbed his "little mountain escape". His older brothers and sisters had their massive, luxurious summer places in Newport, Rhode Island, and Hyde Park, New York but he wanted the mountains.

And he called his hone Biltmore, derived from "De Bilt", his ancestors' place of origin in the Netherlands, and "More", Anglo-Saxon for open, rolling land. Vanderbilt bought nearly 700 parcels of land, including over 50 farms and at least five cemeteries, and began construction on the house in 1889.

Due to its somewhat remote area, and to make building the home easier and, if possible, quicker, a woodworking factory and brick kiln, which produced 32,000 bricks a day, were built onsite, and a three-mile railroad was built to bring materials to the building site. Construction on the main house required the labor of 1,000 workers and 60 stonemasons. The house is over 175,000 square feet—roughly four acres—with 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces and 43 bathrooms; the entire estate originally covered 125,000 acres but is now a much more modest[?] 8,000 acres.

Vanderbilt went on extensive trips overseas to purchase decor while construction continued. He returned to North Carolina with thousands of furnishings for his newly built home including tapestries, hundreds of carpets, prints, linens, and decorative objects, all dating between the 15th century and the late 19th century.

And finally, on Christmas Eve of 1895, George Vanderbilt opened his home to family and friends from across the country, who were encouraged to enjoy leisure and country pursuits. Notable guests to the estate over the years included author Edith Wharton, novelist Henry James, ambassadors Joseph Hodges Choate and Larz Anderson, and U.S. Presidents. George married Edith Stuyvesant Dresser in 1898 in Paris, France; their only child, Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt, was born at Biltmore in the Louis XV room in 1900 and grew up at the estate.

Driven by the impact of the newly imposed income taxes, and the fact that the estate was getting harder to manage economically, sold Vanderbilt  87,000 acres to the federal government. After Vanderbilt's unexpected death in 1914 of complications from an emergency appendectomy, his widow completed the sale to carry out her husband's wish that the land remain unaltered, and that property became the nucleus of the Pisgah National Forest.

He didn’t want his "little mountain escape" affected.

However, running such a large estate was overwhelming, so Edith consolidated her interests and sold Biltmore Estate Industries in 1917 and Biltmore Village in 1921. She intermittently occupied the house, living in an apartment carved out of the former Bachelors' Wing, until the marriage of her daughter to John Francis Amherst Cecil in April 1924. The Cecils had two sons who were born in the same room as their mother.

In an attempt to bolster the estate's financial situation during the Great Depression, Cornelia and her husband opened Biltmore to the public in March 1930 at the request of the City of Asheville, which hoped the attraction would revitalize the area. Biltmore closed during World War II; in 1942, 62 paintings and 17 sculptures were moved to the estate by train from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. to protect them in the event of an attack on the United States.

The Cecils divorced in 1934, and Cornelia left the estate never to return; however, John Cecil maintained his residence in the Bachelors' Wing until his death in 1954. Their eldest son, George Henry Vanderbilt Cecil, occupied rooms in the wing until 1956. At that point Biltmore House ceased to be a family residence and continued to be operated as a historic house museum.

Their younger son William A. V. Cecil, Sr. returned to Biltmore in the late 1950s to help his brother manage the estate when it was in financial trouble and make it the profitable and self-sustaining enterprise his grandfather envisioned. William eventually inherited the estate upon the death of his mother 1976, while his brother, George, inherited the then more profitable dairy farm which was split off into Biltmore Farms.

In 1995, while celebrating the 100th anniversary of the estate, William Cecil turned over control of the company to his son, William A. V. Cecil, Jr. After the death of William A. V. Cecil in October 2017 and his wife Mimi Cecil in November, their daughter Dini Pickering began serving as board chair and their son Bill Cecil as CEO. The house, not including the 8,000-acre property and other businesses on the site, is assessed at $157.2 million …unfurnished.

Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963 Biltmore is a major tourist attraction in Western North Carolina, with over two million visitors each year.