3 October – Asheville

 Today we visited Biltmore Estate. It was constructed by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895 and is the largest privately owned home in the US. The estate cost about $5 million to build in 1889, which is just over $150 million in today’s money. The house is 175,000 square feet, which is more than four acres of floor space. It has 250 rooms, 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces and is designed like a French chateau.

The road through the estate is stunning, designed so each turn reveals a new vista. We were lucky enough to see a mumma bear with her two cubs frolicking about near the ticketing building. We stopped and took pics and video from the safety of the van.

We started with the Backstairs tour which takes you through the servants’ parts of the house. We went through passages and hidden stairways that the servants used to run the house seamlessly and unseen by the family and guests. The guide described the house like an onion, with servants’ layers and family layers separated. We saw the butler’s pantry, the servants’ bedrooms, the electric annunciators (for calling the servants instead of the old call bells), and the dumb waiters that moved food from the basement kitchens. Unusually, every servant had their own bedroom with shared bathrooms.

Following that we did an audio tour of the public rooms, the family rooms, the guest suites, and the basements. The house has an indoor swimming pool, a two-lane bowling alley, its own electric generator, central heating, and telephones. The guide described it as a smart home of the 1890s as it had every mod con of the era. The house is breathtaking, with art, tapestries, furniture and fabrics. We toured the kitchen and laundry, the storerooms, (they even had a walk-in fridge) the house operated similarly to a small commercial hotel when there were guests in. The Vanderbilts entertained regularly, with house parties and events.

We had a quick lunch in the stables, now converted into a café. We had the Tastes of Appalachia, a platter with pulled pork, chicken, baked beans, salads, and roasted carrots. Tasty!

The most interesting tour was the Rooftops tour. We went up to the roof and onto a tiny balcony to look at the gargoyles up close, out onto the domed roof that covers the grand staircase where we saw some of the original gold embellishments on the copper capping, and into the attic to see the inside of the structure and how the slates were individually wired to the iron beams. The house was made of iron, bricks, and limestone so as to be as fireproof as possible. From the roof, we had spectacular views of the surrounding gardens, over to the mountains in the distance.