Biltmore Estate

Biltmore Estate, south facade with terrace and pergola

Biltmore Estate is a country estate near Asheville ( North Carolina ), whose mansion Biltmore House in Renaissance style was built and is now a museum.

It was built by the New York architect Richard Morris Hunt on behalf of George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1888 and 1895. The move took place in 1895. At that time it was the largest private estate in the USA with a total area of 8,000 acres (approx. 32 square kilometers) . The manor house with a floor space of 175,000 square feet (about 16,260 meters) has a 238 meter long facade of Indiana - limestone , includes 250 rooms, a swimming pool, a bowling alley and a gym. When it was completed in 1895, it was fully equipped with electrical connections and was one of the first houses in which Thomas Edison's incandescent lamp was used.

history

George Washington Vanderbilt, the youngest son of William Henry Vanderbilt , regularly visited the climatic health resort of Asheville in North Carolina with his mother, Maria Louisa Kissam Vanderbilt (1821-1896) from the 1880s. While his older siblings had built their summer homes in the New York City area (in Newport, Rhode Island, and Hyde Park, New York), he decided to build his summer residence here. The property also includes its own village, Biltmore Village, and a church known as the Cathedral of All Souls.

The name Biltmore was based on the family name, which means van der Bildt ( German "from Bildt" ), meaning the municipality of Het Bildt in the Netherlands , from which the family came, and More , the old English word for "wide Country".

In May 1963, Biltmore Estate was granted National Historic Landmark status. The property has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a Historic District since October 1966 .

The property is still owned by the family today, but has been open to the public since 1930. It served as a filming location u. a. for the films Welcome Mr. Chance , The Swan , Richie Rich and Hannibal .

Biltmore Estate

architecture

It was Vanderbilt's wish that his summer residence should be built in the style of French Renaissance architecture. He commissioned the prominent New York architect Richard Morris Hunt with this task. Hunt, who studied at the Ḗcole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and had previously worked for the Vanderbilts, designed a castle-like property for his client, which was inspired by several Loire castles (the large staircase of the Château de Blois served as a model for the outer one Spiral staircase ). Hunt made the Châteauesque style popular in the United States with his designs.

Interior decoration

During construction, Vanderbilt went abroad to purchase the facility. He returned to North Carolina with thousands of pieces of furniture for his newly built home. The interior design includes furniture, tapestries, hundreds of rugs, prints, linens, and decorative objects, all of which date from between the 1400s and the late 1800s. The range comes from a wide variety of Eastern and Western countries around the world.