Biltmore Estate

**Biltmore Estate** is a large (6950.4 acre or 10.86 square miles) private estate and tourist attraction in Asheville, North Carolina. Biltmore House, the main residence, is a Chateauesque-style mansion built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895 and is the largest privately owned house in the United States, at 178,926 square feet (16,622.8 m2) of floor space (135,280 square feet (12,568 m2) of living area). Still owned by George Vanderbilt's descendants, it remains one of the most prominent examples of the Gilded Age.

## History

In the 1880s, at the height of the Gilded Age, George Washington Vanderbilt II, youngest son of William Henry Vanderbilt,
 began to make regular visits with his mother, Maria Louisa Kissam
Vanderbilt (1821–1896), to the Asheville, North Carolina, area. He
loved the scenery and climate so much that he decided to create his own summer estate in the area, which he called his "little mountain escape", just as his older brothers and sisters had built opulent summer houses in places such as Newport, Rhode Island and Hyde Park, New York. Vanderbilt named his estate Biltmore derived from "Bildt," Vanderbilt's
ancestors' place of origin in Holland, and "More", Anglo-Saxon for open,
 rolling land. A portion of the estate was once the community of Shiloh. Vanderbilt bought almost 700 parcels of land, including over 50 farms
and at least five cemeteries. A spokesperson for the estate said in 2017
 that archives show much of the land "was in very poor condition, and
many of the farmers and other landowners were glad to sell."

Construction of the house began in 1889 and continued well into 1896. In
 order to facilitate such a large project, a woodworking factory and
brick kiln, which produced 32,000 bricks a day, were built onsite, and a
 three-mile railroad spur was constructed to bring materials to the
building site. Construction on the main house required the labor of well
 over 1,000 workers and 60 stonemasons. Vanderbilt went on extensive buying trips overseas as construction on
the house was in progress. 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. Among the few American-made items were the more
practical oak drop-front desk, rocking chairs, a walnut grand piano, bronze candlesticks and a wicker wastebasket.

George Vanderbilt opened his opulent estate on Christmas Eve 1895 to
invited 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 Presidents William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. 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,
Vanderbilt initiated the sale of 87,000 acres (352 km²) 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. Overwhelmed with running such a large estate, Edith began consolidating
her interests and sold Biltmore Estate Industries in 1917 and Biltmore
Village in 1921. Edith 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
went on to have 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 with tourism. Biltmore closed during World War II and 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 Music Room on the first floor was never finished, so
it was used for storage until 1944, when the possibility of an attack
became more remote. Among the works stored were the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington and works by Rembrandt, Raphael, and Anthony van Dyck. David Finley, the gallery director, was a friend of Edith Vanderbilt and had stayed at the estate.

After the divorce of the Cecils in 1934, 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 this point Biltmore House
ceased to be a family residence and has continued to be operated as a
historic house museum.

Younger son William A. V. Cecil, Sr.
 returned to the estate in the late 1950s and joined his brother to
manage the estate when it was in financial trouble and make it a
profitable and self-sustaining enterprise like his grandfather
envisioned. He eventually inherited the estate upon the death of his
mother, Cornelia, in 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, Cecil
turned over control of the company to his son, William A.V. Cecil, Jr. The Biltmore Company is privately held and of the 4,306.86 acres that
make up Biltmore Estate, only 1.36 acres are in the city limits of
Asheville, and the Biltmore House is not part of any municipality.

The estate was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963, and remains a major tourist attraction in Western North Carolina with 1.4 million visitors each year. After the death of William A. V. Cecil in October 2017 and his wife Mimi
 Cecil in November, their daughter Dini Pickering as board chair and
their son Bill Cecil as CEO announced that the estate would continue to
be run the same way. The house is assessed at $157.2 million but due to
an agricultural deferment, county property taxes are paid on only $79.1
million of that.

## Architecture

Vanderbilt commissioned prominent New York architect Richard Morris Hunt, who had previously designed houses for various Vanderbilt family members, to design the house in the Châteauesque style, using French Renaissance chateaus Vanderbilt and Hunt had visited in early 1889, including Château de Blois, Château de Chenonceau, and Château de Chambord in France and Waddesdon Manor n England, as inspiration with their steeply pitched roofs, turrets and sculptural ornamentation. Hunt sited the four-story Indiana limestone-built home to face east with
 a 375-foot facade to fit into the mountainous topography behind. The
facade is asymmetrically balanced with two projecting wings connecting
to the entrance tower with an open loggia to the left side and a
windowed arcade to the right which held the Winter Garden that was
fashionable during the Victorian era. The entrance tower contains a
series of windows with decorated jambs that extend from the front door
to the most decorated dormer at Biltmore on the fourth floor. The carved
 decorations include trefoils, flowing tracery, rosettes, gargoyles, and at prominent lookouts, grotesques.
 The staircase is one of the more prominent features of the east facade,
 with its three-story, highly decorated winding balustrade with carved
statues of St. Louis and Joan of Arc by the Austrian-born architectural sculptor Karl Bitter.

The south facade has the smallest dimensions for the house and is
dominated by three large dormers on the east side and a polygonal turret
 on the west side. An arbor is attached to the house and is accessed
from the library which is located on the ground floor. On the north end
of the house, Hunt placed the attached stables, carriage house and its
courtyard to protect the house and gardens from the wind. The
12,000-square-foot complex housed Vanderbilt's prized driving horses and
 the carriage house opposite the stables stored his 20 carriages in
addition to any of his guest's carriages.
The rear western elevation is less elaborate than the front
facade, with some windows not having any decoration at all. Two matching
 polygonal towers in the center are connected to the polygonal south
turret by an open loggia that opens the main rooms of the house to the
views of the Blue Ridge Mountains
 in the distance. The loggia is decorated overhead with terracotta tiles
 set in a herringbone pattern. The self-supporting ceramic tile vault
and arch system was used extensively inside and outside of Biltmore, and
 was patented by Rafael Gustavino, a Spanish architect and engineer, who personally supervised the
installation. The limestone columns were carved to reflect the sunlight
in aesthetically pleasing and varied ways per Vanderbilt's wish. The rusticated base is a contrast to the smooth limestone used on the remainder of the house.

The steeply pitched roof is punctuated by 16 chimneys and covered
 with slate tiles that were affixed one by one. Each tile was drilled at
 the corners and wired onto the attic’s steel infrastructure. Copper
flashing was then installed at the junctions to prevent water from
penetrating. The fanciful flashing on the ridge of the roof was embossed
 with George Vanderbilt’s initials and motifs from his family crest,
though the original gold leaf no longer survives.
Biltmore House had electricity from the time it was built. With
electricity less safe and fire more of a danger at the time, the house
had six separate sections divided by brick fire walls.

Vanderbilt paid little attention to the family business or his own
investments and it is believed that the construction and upkeep of
Biltmore depleted much of his inheritance.

## Rumors and legends

The Biltmore Estate is claimed to be one of the most haunted places in the United States. Many visitors to the estate claim to have seen George Vanderbilt's ghost on the property, or hear him calling his wife's name.

According to legend, after Vanderbilt passed away in 1914, servants begin to overhear Edith Vanderbilt speaking to her husband's spirit, and seeing apparitions of him in the library. Today, staff and visitors report hearing conversations between Edith and George Vanderbilt.

Visitors claim to have encountered many other spirits as well. Other spirits commonly reported include a headless orange cat seen between the gardens and the bass pond, and a woman who tickles hotel guests while they sleep. Visitors have also reported electronic devices behaving strangely, such as full batteries being suddenly drained and cell phones ringing when no one is calling them.

The swimming pool is claimed to be the most haunted room in the estate, and visitors have reported hearing splashing sounds from the now empty pool.

## References

1. ↑ Buncombe County Tax Records, http://www.buncombetax.org/, Parcel ID 9637-94-40-00000, Residential Building 22 (mansion) and Commercial Building 9 (attached stable); see also http://www.biltmore.com/visit/house\_gardens/house/faq.asp
2. ↑ "The most haunted places in America". *cbsnews.com.* Retrieved 2018-10-20.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "The Vanderbilts Who Never Left Biltmore Estate". *americashauntedroadtrip.com*.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Biltmore Estate. 2010. Tour.
5. ↑ "The Biltmore Estate". *hauntedplaces.org.* Retrieved 2018-10-20.