Wednesday, July 10th - Today we got to tour the inside of the Biltmore Estate main house. This estate was built by George W. Vanderbilt II who was the youngest child of William H. Vanderbilt and the grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt who built the family fortune from shipping, railroads, etc. Compared to his older brothers he was a relative pauper having inherited only about $10 million dollars. At the age of 26 and still a bachelor he started construction on his summer estate. He bought 125,000 acres and signed Richard Morris Hunt for architecture and Frederick Law Olmstedt for landscaping. The house took 6 years to complete and they had a grand opening on Christmas Eve 1895. It is the largest privately owned home in the United States with 178,926 sq ft and some 255 rooms including 43 bathrooms. Today the house and estate are still owned by the family but consists of only 8,000 acres today. You are not allowed to take any photos inside the house so the only thing I have to show is some photos I took from outside. Needless to say the house is impressive.
One of the neat features this house has is an indoor winter garden. If you look just to the right of the entrance you can see the glass roof over this area. Did take a photo on one of the balconies on the back of the house.
We had lunch in a horse stall in the stables that are just to the side of the house so I've included a shot inside the stables and then a photo of the side of the house that I took from the courtyard.
We then went into Asheville and took a trolley tour of the city. Good thing we did that instead of a walking tour as it really rained hard while we were on the tour. Took a few photos from the bus, the first is the home of a former mayor the other is the Thomas Wolfe family home.
No comments:
Post a Comment