Biltmore Estate
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Biltmore Estate
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Biltmore House
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| Location | Buncombe County, North Carolina, North Carolina, United States |
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| Coordinates | 35°32′22.74″N 82°33′3.42″W / 35.5396500°N 82.5509500°WCoordinates: 35°32′22.74″N 82°33′3.42″W / 35.5396500°N 82.5509500°W |
| Built | 1889–95 |
| Architect | Richard Morris Hunt;Frederick Law Olmsted |
| Architectural style | Châteauesque |
| NRHP Reference # | 66000586 |
| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
Biltmore Estate is a large (6950.4 acre or 10.86 square miles) private estate and tourist attraction near Asheville, North Carolina. Biltmore House, the main house on the estate, is a Châteauesque-style 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 (16,622.8 m2) of floor space (135,280 square feet (12,568 m2) of living area). Still owned by George Vanderbilt's descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age.
In the 1880s, at the height of the Gilded Age, George Washington Vanderbilt II, youngest son of William Henry Vanderbilt, began to make regular visits with his mother, Maria Louisa Kissam Vanderbilt (1821–1896), to the Asheville, North Carolina, area. He loved the scenery and climate so much that he decided to create his own summer estate in the area, which he called his "little mountain escape", just as his older brothers and sisters had built opulent summer houses in places such as Newport, Rhode Island, and Hyde Park, New York. Vanderbilt named his estate Biltmore derived from "Bildt," Vanderbilt's ancestors' place of origin in Holland, and "More", Anglo-Saxon for open, rolling land. A portion of the estate was once the African-American community of Shiloh.
Construction of the house began in 1889 and continued well into 1896. In order to facilitate such a large project, a woodworking factory and brick kiln, which produced 32,000 bricks a day, were built onsite, and a three-mile railroad spur was constructed to bring materials to the building site. Construction on the main house required the labor of well over 1,000 workers and 60 stonemasons. 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 including tapestries, hundreds of carpets, prints, linens, and decorative objects, all dating between the 15th century and the late 19th century. 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.
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