America’s biggest private home

Spread over 8,000 acres, Biltmore Estate embodies the finest in architecture, landscape
planning and interior design, writes Amar Chandel 

AMERICA is home to numerous exceptionally rich and powerful people. Of the world’s 15 top billionaires, seven are Americans. In such a super league, having the honour of being the owner of the biggest private home and then sustaining it for more than a century is quite an achievement. This distinction has been with the family owning Biltmore House near Asheville in North Carolina ever since it was completed in 1895.

The most ambitious home ever conceived in America has 250 rooms and is spread over four acres of floor space, with 35 family and guest rooms, 43 bathrooms, 65 fireplaces, three kitchens and an indoor swimming pool. The front fa`E7ade of the 1,75,000-sq ft house is 375 ft long. The lawn in front of it is nearly half a kilometre long.

The 8,000-acre estate boasts of forestland, farms, a dairy, a 250-acre wooded park, five pleasure gardens and 30 miles of`A0macadamised roads. If you feel that the estate is huge, please remember that at one time, it was spread over 1,25,000 acres.

Today, it is open to public and more than a million visit it every year, paying an entry fee of $50 per person to marvel at its size and opulence, painstakingly preserved and restored. It embodies the finest in architecture, landscape planning and interior design.

It was built by George Washington Vanderbilt III, whose family made its fortune in shipping and rail industry and he was perhaps the richest American of his time. He was also among the most well-read. No wonder the house has more than 10,000 priceless books in its library’s walnut stacks, out of his collection of 23,000 volumes. Some of the books date as early as 1561.

The most stately feature of the house is an octagon tower near the centre which encloses a massive 102-step stone staircase. It has a four-storey high crystal chandelier with 72 bulbs weighing 1,700 pounds, which is suspended from a single hinge.

Equally impressive is the 70,000-gallon indoor pool 53 ft long, 27 ft wide and 9.5 ft deep with such amenities as underwater lighting, safety ropes and a diving platform.

Even at that time, Biltmore House had central heating, electricity and a plumbing system that piped fresh water from a mountain reservoir several miles away. It was equipped with fire alarms, telephones, mechanical refrigeration and elevators – all novelties at that time.

Modelled after chateaus of France, which George loved, the huge house took only six years to complete. Nobody has tried to estimate its cost, and the current owners prefer to remain silent, but in present terms, it could be worth billions.

The largest room of the house, the Banquet Hall, measures 72 ft long and 42 ft wide, with a 70-foot-high barrel-vaulted ceiling. Its acoustics are so good that two persons sitting at opposite ends of the 32-chair dining table can converse without having to raise their voice.

The house is chock-a-block with art objects such as fine engravings by 16th- and 17th-century artists from Germany and Holland and bronze sculptures from the 19th-century France. There are silk wall coverings, fancily trimmed mirrors, Savonnerie carpets and velvet draperies on the windows and beds. Many items have been recreated from the originals.

Its 12,000-square-foot stable complex now houses gift shops and a highly popular restaurant.

George had visited this area in 1888 and fell in love with its fresh air, pleasant climate and mineral springs. Finding it to be the perfect setting for a new home, he engaged two of the most distinguished designers of the 19th century, architect Richard Morris Hunt (1828-95) and landscape artist Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) to create this magnificent house.

He purchased 1,25,000 acres of land, calling his estate "Biltmore", from Bildt, the Dutch town from where his ancestors originated, and "more", an old English word for open, rolling land.

Construction of the four-storey house with a steeply pitched roof began in 1889. Limestone was hauled from 600 miles away (Indiana). Marble was imported from Italy. An on-site kiln produced the 11 million bricks. A nursery was also created to supply the millions of plants for the ground.

Biltmore was opened in 1895 on the Christmas Eve after six years of construction. George Vanderbilt married Edith Stuyvesant Dresser (1873-1958) in June 1898 in Paris and the couple came to live at the estate. Their only child, Cornelia (1900-76), was born and grew up at Biltmore.

Guests to the state – including such luminaries as Presidents McKinley, Wilson and Nixon and novelists Edith Wharton and Henry James – partook of such pastimes as tennis, archery, croquet, indoor bowling, picnicking, riding, hunting, concerts, parlour games and dancing here. Each activity had its own dress code, for which ladies and gentlemen had to change their clothes several times a day.

At any given time, Biltmore House used to have 400 servants.

George died in 1914 following emergency appendectomy in Washington DC. His widow sold nearly 87,000 acres to the federal government in 1915, creating the nucleus of Pisgah National Forest.

Cornelia was married to John Francis Amherst Cecil (1890-1954), a descendant of William Cecil (1520-98). Next year, Edith married Senator Peter G. Gerry.

Cornelia’s two sons, George Henry Vanderbilt Cecil and William Amherst Vanderbilt Cecil, were born on the estate in 1925 and 1928, respectively. The Cecils opened the estate to the public for the first time in March 1930 following a request by the city of Asheville, which wanted to revitalise the Depression-era economy with tourism, and to generate funds for the estate.

Named a National Historic Landmark in 1963, Biltmore celebrated its 100thanniversary in 1995 under William Cecil, who announced his retirement passing leadership to his son William A. V. Cecil Jr who is President and CEO of the Biltmore Company that today employs nearly 2,000 persons.

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