If you think cleaning your house is a chore and heating it costs too much money, a visit to Biltmore Estate might make you thankful for simplicity. For the wealthy, the living was easy. And the old homestead was lavish, to say the least. It's now on 8,000 acres of estate. Originally, it was a whopping 125,000 acres.
Fine art is everywhere.
And there are the two Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings in the Chippendale room. Even the basement-level servants' quarters are impressive. Walk-in food lockers, cooled by a chilled brine solution circulating through pipes, preserved food for the household. An electric dumbwaiter with push-button controls carried items 38 feet from the basement to the second floor. The house's other innovations were well before their time.