Where is the biltmore
Vanderbilt's Biltmore Estate: 6 Years to Build, 43 Bathrooms š¤© Aerial America | Smithsonian Channel
during America's Gilded Age Asheville
was also a popular getaway spot for
America's richest industrialists
including the Edison's Rockefellers and
Vanderbilt some of whom built country
homes here one of them is the largest
private house in the United States the
Biltmore Estate was constructed in the
1890s by 26 year-old George Washington
Vanderbilt grandson of Cornelius
Vanderbilt the famous New York railroad
tycoon with virtually unlimited
resources at his disposal
Vanderbilt's French Renaissance style
Estate took more than six years to build
and was such a massive undertaking it
required its own brick making factory
and a private railway for delivering
materials the finished 250 room mansion
has 34 bedrooms
and 43 bathrooms when it came to
designing the Biltmore's grounds George
Vanderbilt hired the best of the best
Frederick Olmsted the landscape
architect who created New York's Central
Park Olmsted designed formal gardens
close to the house but he also
regenerated forest areas around the
estate by transplanting trees and
encouraging new growth it was one of the
country's very first forest conservation
projects
during the Great Depression Asheville's
tourist trade was in decline
so the Vanderbilt family agreed to open
the Biltmore for public tours today the
estate is visited by more than a million
people a year
while the Biltmore was under
construction George Vanderbilt began
acquiring acreage around the property to
use as a private hunting retreat this is
just one of the parcels he bought Mount
Pisgah
logging here had cut wide gashes into
the landscape but Vanderbilt hired
foresters to manage the land and bring
this forest back to life one of these
german-born Carl shank
went on to establish the Biltmore Forest
School the first of its kind in the
United States
in 1914 the US government bought 87,000
acres of this land from his estate and
turned it into the Pisgah National
Forest it's best known as the home
to Cold Mountain the title of the
best-selling civil war novel written by
Asheville native Charles Frazier and
later adapted into a film by Anthony
Minghella
