December 24, 1895—It required hundreds of laborers over six years, but now George Vanderbilt was ready to unwrap a most unusual sight for his family in time for Christmas—a house that not only leaves mouths ajar in our time, but, even more surprisingly, in his own, when robber barons engaged in what sociologist Thorstein Veblen called “conspicuous consumption.”
Over the years, before I finally had the chance to see this vast Asheville, N.C. estate for myself, I heard two major hints about the grandiosity of The Biltmore:
1) Local scapegrace Thomas Wolfe noted, in his debut (and still bestselling) novel, Look Homeward, Angel: “Several rich men from the North had established hunting lodges in the hills, and one of them had bought huge areas of mountain land and, with an army of imported architects, carpenters and masons, was planning the greatest country estate in America—something in limestone, with pitched slate roofs, and one hundred and eighty-three rooms. It was modeled on the chateau at Blois.” Unfortunately, when I was a teenager I didn’t have a clue what Wolfe was referring to—though most of his readers in 1929 would need few if any such hints. In fact, I didn’t figure out what he meant until I was past 50, when I actually visited The Biltmore.
2) Over 20 years ago, visiting the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, N.Y. (owned by George’s older brother Frederick), I marveled at its size to a tour guide. “Actually, it’s more like a bungalow compared with The Biltmore,” he told me.
Six weeks ago, after touring The Biltmore, I decided that the Vanderbilt Mansion guide might have exaggerated the difference between the two, but not by all that much.
One hundred and fifteen years after George Vanderbilt celebrated the Yuletide with his family with a trimmed tree, holiday feasts and a coaching party, they still celebrate Christmas in a very big way at The Biltmore.
Maybe tourists come in the greatest numbers in the summer, but they should consider coming in the last two months of the year, as I did, when shorter nights provide far more photo opportunities of the tree on the front lawn or, as in the accompanying picture I took, of the numerous gaily decorated statues.
At that first Christmastime, the guests at The Biltmore would be as astonished as I was, I’d bet, by the three-mile approach road to the mansion. When you’re driving out of the estate after the sun is down, as I did, you’ll wonder why you’ll get to the end of it, and pray that no creatures are going to dart from the side of the road in front of you.
But when you’re entering—well, that’s another story. The road, like the rest of the grounds, was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, then nearing the end of an illustrious career, but wanting to go out with a bang.
“I call it ‘the WOW factor,” a Biltmore tourist told me about the approach road. But Olmsted called it ‘building anticipation.’”
Whatever you call it, it works. “Hasn’t Olmsted done wonders with the approach road?” wrote architect Richard Morris Hunt to George Vanderbilt in 1892. “ It alone will give him lasting fame.”
Given Olmsted’s work on Central Park, that might be stretching matters. But there was little doubt that, like the rest of the property, it was awe-inspiring.
It seemed richly appropriate that George Vanderbilt’s portrait hangs over the entrance to the library, because books formed the bedrock of his considerable intellectual tastes from early on. He would accompany his father into London on bookbuying trips even as a youngster, and by the time he was done even the Biltmore’s walnut shelves could contain only less than half of his 23,000-volume collection.
Vanderbilt appears as an aesthete in the John Singer Sargent portrait. He certainly doesn’t have the hardened look that his father and grandfather (the original family fortune builder, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt) possessed. He reminded me of Lewis Raycie, the young American whose taste in art run counter both to his father and contemporary taste, in Edith Wharton’s novella “False Dawn.”
Wharton had another person in mind when writing this initial segment of her Old New York quartet of novellas—James Jackson Jarves, who collected works of art by underappreciated Italian painters of the Renaissance. Both Vanderbilt—who, unlike his brothers, did not go into the family business (he ran The Biltmore as a self-sustaining unit)—was just the kind of connoisseur with elevated tastes that Wharton would have appreciated.
I wasn’t surprised, then, to find out that Wharton was a childhood friend of Vanderbilt’s wife who spent considerable time at the mansion; and that, in fact, a decade later, she was there to witness George and Edith Vanderbilt distributing presents, in the huge Biltmore banquet hall, to 350 workers on their estate.
Over the years, before I finally had the chance to see this vast Asheville, N.C. estate for myself, I heard two major hints about the grandiosity of The Biltmore:
1) Local scapegrace Thomas Wolfe noted, in his debut (and still bestselling) novel, Look Homeward, Angel: “Several rich men from the North had established hunting lodges in the hills, and one of them had bought huge areas of mountain land and, with an army of imported architects, carpenters and masons, was planning the greatest country estate in America—something in limestone, with pitched slate roofs, and one hundred and eighty-three rooms. It was modeled on the chateau at Blois.” Unfortunately, when I was a teenager I didn’t have a clue what Wolfe was referring to—though most of his readers in 1929 would need few if any such hints. In fact, I didn’t figure out what he meant until I was past 50, when I actually visited The Biltmore.
2) Over 20 years ago, visiting the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, N.Y. (owned by George’s older brother Frederick), I marveled at its size to a tour guide. “Actually, it’s more like a bungalow compared with The Biltmore,” he told me.
Six weeks ago, after touring The Biltmore, I decided that the Vanderbilt Mansion guide might have exaggerated the difference between the two, but not by all that much.
One hundred and fifteen years after George Vanderbilt celebrated the Yuletide with his family with a trimmed tree, holiday feasts and a coaching party, they still celebrate Christmas in a very big way at The Biltmore.
Maybe tourists come in the greatest numbers in the summer, but they should consider coming in the last two months of the year, as I did, when shorter nights provide far more photo opportunities of the tree on the front lawn or, as in the accompanying picture I took, of the numerous gaily decorated statues.
At that first Christmastime, the guests at The Biltmore would be as astonished as I was, I’d bet, by the three-mile approach road to the mansion. When you’re driving out of the estate after the sun is down, as I did, you’ll wonder why you’ll get to the end of it, and pray that no creatures are going to dart from the side of the road in front of you.
But when you’re entering—well, that’s another story. The road, like the rest of the grounds, was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, then nearing the end of an illustrious career, but wanting to go out with a bang.
“I call it ‘the WOW factor,” a Biltmore tourist told me about the approach road. But Olmsted called it ‘building anticipation.’”
Whatever you call it, it works. “Hasn’t Olmsted done wonders with the approach road?” wrote architect Richard Morris Hunt to George Vanderbilt in 1892. “ It alone will give him lasting fame.”
Given Olmsted’s work on Central Park, that might be stretching matters. But there was little doubt that, like the rest of the property, it was awe-inspiring.
It seemed richly appropriate that George Vanderbilt’s portrait hangs over the entrance to the library, because books formed the bedrock of his considerable intellectual tastes from early on. He would accompany his father into London on bookbuying trips even as a youngster, and by the time he was done even the Biltmore’s walnut shelves could contain only less than half of his 23,000-volume collection.
Vanderbilt appears as an aesthete in the John Singer Sargent portrait. He certainly doesn’t have the hardened look that his father and grandfather (the original family fortune builder, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt) possessed. He reminded me of Lewis Raycie, the young American whose taste in art run counter both to his father and contemporary taste, in Edith Wharton’s novella “False Dawn.”
Wharton had another person in mind when writing this initial segment of her Old New York quartet of novellas—James Jackson Jarves, who collected works of art by underappreciated Italian painters of the Renaissance. Both Vanderbilt—who, unlike his brothers, did not go into the family business (he ran The Biltmore as a self-sustaining unit)—was just the kind of connoisseur with elevated tastes that Wharton would have appreciated.
I wasn’t surprised, then, to find out that Wharton was a childhood friend of Vanderbilt’s wife who spent considerable time at the mansion; and that, in fact, a decade later, she was there to witness George and Edith Vanderbilt distributing presents, in the huge Biltmore banquet hall, to 350 workers on their estate.
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