NC -- Asheville -- Biltmore Estate -- Other:
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I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
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[2] BILTO_040905_020.JPG
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- BILTO_040905_028.JPG: Margot Lebow @ the Biltmore
- BILTO_040905_057.JPG: Margot Lebow @ The Biltmore
- AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
- Wikipedia Description: Biltmore Estate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Biltmore House is a French Renaissance-inspired chateau near Asheville, North Carolina, built by George Washington Vanderbilt II in September between 1888 and 1895. It is the largest privately-owned home in the United States, at 175,000 square feet. Still owned by Vanderbilt's descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age.
History:
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 to the Asheville area. He loved the scenery and climate so much that he decided to create his own summer estate in the area, as his older brothers and sisters had built opulent summer houses in places such as Newport, Rhode Island, and Hyde Park, New York.
Vanderbilt's idea was to replicate the working estates of Europe. He commissioned Richard Morris Hunt, who had previously designed houses for various family members, to design the house in imitation of several Loire Valley chateaux, including the Chateau de Blois. Wanting the best, Vanderbilt also employed Frederick Law Olmsted to design the grounds, including the deliberately rustic three-mile Approach Road, and Gifford Pinchot to manage the forests. Intending that the estate could be self-supporting, Vanderbilt set up scientific forestry programs, poultry farms, cattle farms, hog farms and a dairy. The estate included its own village (today Biltmore Village) and even a church. Family members and friends invited from all over the United States and beyond came to experience the opulent estate with the splendor of Olmsted's sweet-smelling gardens, rich foods at the 64-seat banquet table, and the stunning beauty of Vanderbilt's mountainous grounds. Famous guests through the years include author Edith Wharton, novelist Henry James, Presidents McKinley, Wilson, Nixon, and Charles, Prince of Wales.
Vanderbilt paid little attention to the family business or his own investments, and the construction and upkeep of Biltmore depleted much of his inheritance. After Vanderbilt died of complications from an emergency appendectomy in 1914, his widow, Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt, finalized the sale of much of the original 125,000 acres (506 kmē) to the federal government (begun by Vanderbilt before his death), which became the nucleus of Pisgah National Forest.
The estate today covers approximately 8,000 acres (32 kmē) 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, II. In 1963, it was designated a National Historic Landmark.
Tourist attraction:
In an attempt to bolster the Depression-riven economy, Vanderbilt's only child, Cornelia Vanderbilt Cecil, and husband John Amherst Cecil opened Biltmore House to the public on March 15, 1930.
The house was occupied less and less permanently until 1956, when it was permanently opened to the public as a house museum. Visitors from all over the world continue to be amazed at the 70,000 gallon indoor swimming pool, bowling alley, turn-of-the-century exercise equipment, two-story library, and other rooms filled with art works, furniture, and 19th century novelties like elevators, forced-air heating, centrally-controlled clocks, fire alarms, and an intercom system. It remains a major tourist attraction in western North Carolina, with over 1,000,000 visitors each year.
In 2005 the fourth floor of the house was opened by the Department of Museum Services headed by Ellen Rickman, the director. The floor reveals the life of a Biltmore House maid with a Servants’ Hall, Servants’ Bedrooms and Bathrooms, and three house closets. The Architectural Model Room showcases Hunt’s 1889 model of Biltmore House, while the Observatory offers views of the estate from a central vantage point at the top of the main tower.
Besides the house, the grounds also feature gardens and a winery that are also both open to the public, and the Inn on Biltmore Estate, a Mobil Travel Guide four-star and AAA four-diamond 213-room hotel.
Future plans include the restoration of the Oak Sitting Room (Spring 2009) and Second Floor Living Hall (2012), as well as the opening of the Library Wing guest rooms.
The Biltmore Estate ranked 8th in a 2007 poll by the American Institute of Architects of the top 150 favorite structures in the United States.
Movie roles:
Biltmore Estate's grounds and buildings have appeared in a number of major motion pictures:
* The Clearing (2002)
* Hannibal (2001)
* Patch Adams (1998)
* My Fellow Americans (1996)
* Richie Rich (1994)
* Forrest Gump (1994)
* Last of the Mohicans (1992)
* Mr. Destiny (1990)
* The Private Eyes (1981)
* Being There (1979)
* The Swan (1956)
* Tap Roots (1948)
- Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
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