Monday, April 30, 2012

The Biltmore

For years my sister has been telling me about the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.  A friend came to visit from California and since visiting the Biltmore was on her bucket list, we had to go.  My sister met us there since it's only a few hours from her house.


The Biltmore has 250 rooms - a mere 135,000 square feet or 4 acres!  It's the largest privately-owned home in the United States.  The Vanderbilt family has owned the home ever since George Washington Vanderbilt II built it between 1889-1895. 


The amazing thing about this house is that the rooms are fully furnished and decorated just as they were when the family lived there.  The family spares no cost when it comes to restoring fabrics and wallpapers.  A weaver in France still had the same cards (patterns) that had been used to weave custom fabrics decades earlier and they were able to reproduce some of the original fabrics with those cards.

My favorite room was the atrium.  In the first picture (above) you can see its conical glass roof to the right of the front door.  It's an amazing sight as you enter the house.  It's like a rainforest with a tiled floor and smattering of paired chairs for conversation.  Here's a list of some of the other features of the house:
  • 43 bathrooms, in a time when indoor plumbing was almost non-existent
  • 65 fireplaces
  • 3 kitchens
  • 34 bedrooms
  • a grand banquet hall
  • a huge two-story library with thousands of books
  • a two-lane bowling alley, the pins had to be set manually
  • an indoor swimming pool
We weren't allowed to take pictures inside so I guess you'll have to take a tour if you want to see the inside, or google it - there are lots of bootleg photos out there.  The grounds were immense and gorgeous.  This is a picture of the conservatory with its unique masonry.  I didn't take pictures inside but you can go here to take a peek.


Below you can see the remains of the wisteria in bloom.  If only we had been there a week earlier!


Here's a gnarly old wisteria trunk.  If only gnarly old wisteria trunks could talk.  It almost looks like it could!


Here's a wisteria imposter, equally as beautiful.  Anyone know what it is?


We thought this Weeping Blue Atlas Cedar would work well as inspiration for a Dr. Suess illustration.


This was a fun lattice tunnel with portholes.  The sun-seeking vines were just starting to weave their way up through the lattice maze.


Look what's blooming in the tunnel!

3 comments:

  1. I went there once! It was amazing. It seems like we had ice cream there too. Great photos.

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    1. Yep, they sell ice cream. We had some. When were you there and who did you go with?

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  2. We went there as part of the Charles Family Reunion a couple of years ago. It was very nice, although we went on a very hot day, which was not so nice. We ate in the restaurant out by the stables. The kids loved being able to choose from the buffet. I wish we would have had more time to rent bikes and ride around the grounds.

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