Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Biltmore Estate

Biltmore House is a French Renaissance-style mansion near Asheville, North Carolina, built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895. It is the largest privately-owned home in the United States, at 175,000 square feet (16,300 m2) and featuring 250 rooms. Still owned by one of Vanderbilt's descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age. In 2007, it was ranked eighth on the List of America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects. In an attempt to bolster the Depression-riven economy, Vanderbilt's only child, Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt, and her husband, John Amherst Cecil, opened Biltmore House to the public in March 1930. Family members continued to live there until 1956, when it was permanently opened to the public as a house museum. Visitors from all over the world continue to marvel at the 70,000 gallon (265 cubic meter) indoor swimming pool, bowling alley, turn-of-the-century exercise equipment, two-story library, and other rooms filled with artworks, furniture and 19th-century novelties such as elevators, forced-air heating, centrally-controlled clocks, fire alarms and an intercom system. It also has pipes under the bass pond that pump debris-filled stormwater under the lake bed. It remains a major tourist attraction in Western North Carolina, with more than 1 million visitors each year.

Besides the house, the grounds also feature approximately 75 acres (30 ha) of formal gardens, a winery and the Inn on Biltmore Estate, a AAA four-diamond 213-room hotel.

The Louis XV Suite was restored and opened to the public in 2009, and plans call for the restoration of the Oak Sitting Room and Second Floor Living Hall in 2012.

Biltmore House ranked eighth in a 2007 poll by the American Institute of Architects of the top 150 favorite structures in the United States.