Dear Friends May 2015 After our final history class (which lasted 8 minutes), I hit the road, driving through a hailstorm between Lewisburg and the Virginia line. I’ve never driven through hail before. The rain was very heavy and I suddenly couldn’t see out the windshield with my wipers on “normal.” Quickly turned them to high and slowed down. It was very loud. Had to turn my music up high to hear it. Only lasted 5 minutes. After a 7-hour drive, I met Cousin Maggie at a relative’s house in the mountains near Front Royal, where Maggie left her car. We headed south on I-81, chatting and listening to the music of our youth (Ian & Sylvia, New Christy Minstrels), arriving at Christiansburg, Virginia, as darkness fell. Nice meal at Outback and then settled down at the Hampton next door to rest up for our long weekend adventure. The next morning, we drove the rest of the way to Asheville, arriving an hour before our first scheduled tour -- a self-guided audio tour of Biltmore House. I haven't been here in a very long time, and a lot has changed. I remember parking along the circular drive right in front of the mansion. Now you have to park several miles away and take a shuttlebus. It was as crowded as Disney World. Some background, courtesy of online sources and my notes: Biltmore House, the main house on the estate, is a Châteauesque-styled 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 of floor space (135,280 square feet of living area) and featuring 250 rooms. Still owned by one of Vanderbilt’s descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age. In 2007, it was ranked eighth in America’s Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects. 2 Vanderbilt’s idea was to replicate the working estates of Europe. He commissioned prominent New York architect Richard Morris Hunt, who had previously designed houses for various Vanderbilt family members (including The Breakers and The Marble House), to design the house, using several Loire Valley French Renaissance architecture chateaux, including the Chateau de Blois, as models. The estate included its own village, today named Biltmore Village, and a church. 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. These included furniture, tapestries, hundreds of carpets, prints, linens and decorative objects, all dating between the 1400s and the late 1800s, and all coming from various eastern and western countries and continents around the world. 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. Wanting the best, Vanderbilt also employed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to design the grounds, with the immediate gardens in the Garden à la française style, beyond those in the English Landscape garden style. Beyond these were the natural woodlands and agricultural lands with the intentionally rustic three-mile approach road passing through. There were originally 60 miles of roads on the estate, most of them dirt. Intending that the estate could be self-supporting, Vanderbilt set up scientific forestry programs, poultry farms, cattle farms, hog farms and a dairy. His wife, Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt, also enthusiastically supported agricultural reform and promoted the establishment of a state agricultural fair. In 1901, to help provide local employment, the Vanderbilts started Biltmore Industries, which made furniture modeled after the furnishings of the estate. The Vanderbilts invited family and friends from across the country to the opulent estate. Notable guests to the estate over the years have included author Edith Wharton, novelist Henry James, H.R.H. The Prince of Wales, and Presidents McKinley, T. Roosevelt and Wilson. 3 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. After Vanderbilt died in 1914 of complications from an emergency appendectomy, his widow, Edith Vanderbilt, completed the sale of 85,000 of the original 125,000 acres to the federal government. This was to carry out her husband’s wish that the land remain unaltered, and that property became the nucleus of the Pisgah National Forest. During World War II, 62 paintings and 17 sculptures were moved 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. Among these 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, who had stayed at the estate. The music room was not ready, so it was used for storage from January 1942 until 1944, when the possibility of an attack became more remote. This is John Singer Sargent’s portrait of George Vanderbilt, appropriately holding a book. In an attempt to bolster the estate’s financial situation during the Depression, Vanderbilt’s only child, Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt, and her husband, John Amherst Cecil, opened Biltmore House to the public in March 1930. Family members continued to live there until 1956, when it was permanently opened to the public as a house museum. Visitors can view the 70,000-gallon indoor swimming pool, bowling alley, early 20th century exercise equipment, two- story library, and other rooms filled with artworks, furniture and 19th century novelties such as elevators, forced-air heating, centrally controlled clocks, fire alarms and an intercom system. The estate remains a major tourist attraction and has almost 1 million visitors each year. In 2010, they debuted Antler Hill Village, as well as a remodeled winery, and connected farmyard. The Village includes the Outdoor Adventure Center, Creamery, Cedric’s Tavern, and the Biltmore Legacy, which is another museum highlighting the time of the Vanderbilts. George Vanderbilt’s preserved 1913 Stevens-Duryea C-Six is currently on display at the Winery. Vanderbilt was an early and ardent driver; documents show he upgraded to the ’13 Duryea (from the previous year’s model) because the newer car featured electric lamps (as opposed to oils). Originally delivered in a dark gray or black, rumor holds that Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt found the color depressing, and ordered a repaint. Hence the car is dressed in white with black pinstripes (and features her monogram on the rear doors). 4 The estate today covers over 8,000 acres and is split in half by the French Broad River. It is owned by the Biltmore Company, which is controlled by Vanderbilt’s grandson, William A.V. Cecil Sr., who inherited the estate upon the death of his mother, Cornelia. William Sr.’s son, Bill Jr., serves as company president. In 1964, it was designated a National Historic Landmark. The dairy farm was split off into Biltmore Farms, run by William Cecil’s brother, George Henry Vanderbilt Cecil. William Cecil converted the former dairy barn into the Biltmore Winery. We took five different tours over two days. The first was a self-paced audio tour. Here are some highlights: The banquet hall measures 72 by 42 feet with a 70-foot ceiling and has 3,000 square feet of space -- more than most of our homes. It features Flemish tapestries from 1525, which took five years to plan and five more years to weave. The center of this magnificent room is dominated by an oak dining table seating 64 chairs. Due to the size of the room, the table was specially designed by the lead architect, Richard Hunt. The acoustics are said to make it possible for a person at one end of the table to speak with another at the other end without raising a voice. There are many portraits by John Singer Sargent -- of the Vanderbilt family as well as the “hired help” like architect Richard Morris Hunt and landscape architect William Law Olmstead. (No photos are allowed inside the house, so these were found online.) The acoustics of the hall were designed so well that two people sitting on opposite ends of the banquet hall table do not have to raise their voices in order to be heard. High above the triple fireplace in the banquet hall hangs the Vanderbilt family crest, crowned by flags of the great powers of the 15th century. When Vanderbilt took 18 months planning the house. He and Hunt took a tour of Europe in order to copy the architecture and brought along photographers, who filled 42 photo albums with ideas. His team of architects produced a wood and plaster scale model of the proposed house and 1,000 detailed drawings. Details of the house are inspired from Notre Dame Cathedral and 5 Château de Chambord at Chambord in France (at right), one of the most recognizable châteaux in the world because of its very distinctive French Renaissance architecture which blends traditional French medieval forms with classical Renaissance structures. The Biltmore house was designed with electricity, powered by generators in the basement. It contains two electric elevators, an electric dumbwaiter and a rope-pull dumbwaiter, and huge refrigerators which also made ice. Electricity also powered the intercom and servants' call systems. And there was central heat. One of my favorite rooms is the two-story library, which contains half of Vanderbilt's 23,000 volumes, all personally selected.