Yesterday, my girlfriend and I toured the largest private home in the U.S. located in Asheville, North Carolina. The Biltmore House spans 178,926 sq ft of floor space with 250 rooms, 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces.
Cornelius Vanderbilt built an empire with shipping and railroads in the 1800s. When he died in 1877, he was the richest person in America. The money stayed in the family in part because there was no personal income tax in the US until 1913. Cornelius’s grandson George Vanderbilt II was born in 1862, and with the family fortune, he started construction on the Biltmore House in 1889. Six years later, the Biltmore House was open to friends and family.
The scale of the land used for this estate is evident once you enter the property. You drive on winding roads several miles before you reach a parking area. Once you park, you take a shuttle bus to the mansion.
The mansion is of a grand scale. One of the first rooms we saw was the grand banquet hall. The scale of this hall is like something out of a movie. It had high arches and looked like a cathedral. There is no plain, flat surface anywhere. There are tapestries hung on the walls and ornate carvings and decorations throughout. We had the added benefit of seeing all the Christmas decorations, prepared in a style from that era.
George Vanderbilt’s library was truly impressive. At age 12, George began keeping records of books he read. By his death in 1914, he logged 3,159 books, which means between 1875 and 1914, he read an average of 81 books a year. The two-story library has bookshelves floor to ceiling that house over 23,000 books.
There is a long hall next to the library that displays large tapestries. According to the audio guide, the tapestries required five years of planning and designing and another five years to make. The tapestry depicting several scenes from the Bible displayed prominently between two fireplaces is the only one of its kind in the world.
George and his wife Edith had separate bedrooms separated by a large parlor. Apparently in this age, women changed outfits multiple times per day, so it was necessary for her to have private quarters with her handmaidens. The beds looked very small, but we were told they are actually large beds that happen to look small because of the scale of the rooms.
The bathrooms were modern for the time including large tubs and toilets with the water tanks mounted on the wall above and activated by pulling a chain. Curiously, many of the bathrooms did not have sinks because many people preferred using bowls of hot water privately in their bedrooms.
In the basement (also the largest in the US), there is a two-lane bowling alley, a pool, and a work-out room. The basement is also home to the servants’ quarters, the kitchen, refrigerators, pantries, and laundry facilities.
We rounded out the tour with the Bachelor’s wing. This included the Billiard Room with two custom-made pool tables, each weighing one ton. There is a secret door from this room to two adjacent rooms, the Smoking Room and the Gun Room.
I’m used to a door looking like a door. There were several secret doors that were decorated to match the walls around them. The only other place I have seen these types of doors is the White House.
Our tour lasted a little over two hours, and we only saw 39 of the 250 rooms. I am amazed that there is still 85% of the house that we did not see!
I am grateful to have the opportunity to see this monument of “The Gilded Age.” I’m also glad to view it as an adult when I can fully appreciate the history and majesty. By the way, there were several families with young children on the tour. In my opinion, it’s a waste to bring children that young. They were impatient and had to be constantly wrangled. They are too young to appreciate it and probably won’t even remember it. Take your young kids to Disney instead, and wait until they are older before you waste the money on tickets to tour something of such historical significance.