Leah and I drove up to Asheville, NC, on Saturday, December 10. We wanted to see the Vanderbilt Estate in its Christmas finery.

Asheville is about 222 miles northeast of us via two-land mountain roads. Google Maps estimated it to be a 4 hour 16 minutes drive. A route taking I-75 to Knoxville, TN, and then I-40 east almost to the front door of the hotel was 275 miles. That route was supposed to take 4 hours and 28 minutes. However, I didn’t believe that we could make the average speed that Google thought we could on the mountain roads. The road is winding and passes through every small town between Rome and Asheville. So we took the Interstate.

The Biltmore Estate is said to be the largest private residence in the United States. It was built by George Vanderbilt, the grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, in the late 1890’s. It was initially to be a small summer retreat for him and his mother, who had been advised to try the weather in the North Carolina mountains for her health.

Construction began in 1889. The house was opened in 1895. It has 250 rooms in total, including 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces. There is more than 135,000 square feet of living space. The estate originally had 125,000 acres. The family later sold most of it to the federal government as a national forest, leaving 8000 acres in the estate today.

The cost of building the estate was estimated by one source as about $5 million, which would be around $90 million in today’s money. A lot of Grandfather Cornelius’s money was in railroading (New York Central) so, of course, his grandson had a three-mile spur built to haul material and workers to the construction site.

When Cornelius Vanderbilt, the patron of the family, died, he was supposed to be the richest man in the US. When his eldest son died, he was also the richest man in the US. Cornelius’s grandson George apparently used most of his part of the inheritance to build the Biltmore Estate, paying little attention to maintaining his business interests. I suppose it’s not surprising that one of the current Vanderbilt descendants, Anderson Cooper, has been quoted as saying that his mother (Gloria Vanderbilt) told him there was no trust fund.

George married in 1898 and the couple had a daughter, Cornelia, in 1900. Unfortunately, George didn’t get a chance to enjoy his gigantic estate for long. He died in 1913 at age 51 from complications from an appendectomy. His widow moved back to the estate and Cornelia grew up there.

The main house is approached by a three-mile road that winds through the forest and ends at one of the gates, at which point the house abruptly comes into view.

This is the exterior of the main stairwell.

The house has four floors and a basement. The family living quarters are on the second and third floors. This is the exterior of the nursery.

I wonder if the gargoyles gave baby Cornelia nightmares. I wonder how a few would look on our house. Maybe I’ll settle for a Kokopelli in the front yard.

The glass roof between these two wings covers a plant room just off the main entrance.

This is the main entry hall, looking from the rear towards the front doors.

Christmas decorations are big at the Biltmore, as you can see when I post some more pictures later.