Biltmore castle

My wife and I went to Pigeon Forge Tenn. a couple of weeks ago so we took a day to go to see Biltmore castle in Ashville NC. Have any of you toured that place? To me it is one of the most complicated, and beautiful, structures in this country. My first question is, who the heck was the engineer that ramrodded that building? By the time it was finished he was either completely insane or dead. One of the tour guides said that to build the home today would cost somewhere around 10 to 11 Billion bucks. Nice weekend cabin huh?

Construction started in 1889 and it was opened in 1895 and involved about 1100 men of which about 600 were stonemasons. It is a fricking beautiful place to behold.

 

Love that place. The behind the scene tours are worth every penny.

 

Yep, it's pretty damn cool.

And if you want to see more displays of ostentatious wealth, go to Newport, Rhode Island some day. All of the big industrialist of the 20th century built their castles there.

 

We've been twice and done just the regular tour.. They do more in depth tours?? If so, I WILL go back.. Love that place..

 

Richard Morris Hunt was the architect. Perhaps the engineer was on his staff.

 

most definitely...

 

You can go in the basement.

That's where Pee Wee's bike is located.

 

+1 we went there for a family vacation when I was 14 or so. It was an awesome trip.

 

I haven't had a chance to do the behind the scenes tour, but going at Christmas is worthwhile.

 

Amazing the wealth that lived (lives) there. Fun little town too.

 

My wife and I have been twice. The second time we went we took my daughter and her husband and it was during the Christmas season with all of the lights and decorations. I want to go back and take a couple of the other tours. The word Spectacular just doesn't do it justice!

 

The gun room was one of my favorites.

 

Meh...Anyone can pay to have their castle built by legions of serfs.

Hand-build your own.

 

If I ever get back to the Carolina's, I will have to check this out.

For those that have seen both, how does it compare to Hearst Castle in California? I've been there twice, taken two of the tours, and would gladly go again.

 

The Biltmore house is something special. My wife and I had year passes a while back and went about 4 times. The house itself gets impressively decorated depending on the season, but it was always the grounds that interested us the most. Definitely worth a trip to Asheville.

I also highly recommend the Grove Park Inn for an evening drink at the Great Hall Bar. The hotel sits on the side of a mountain and has an incredible view of Asheville, especially at night.

 

Hmm, never been. Always heard it was nifty. A friend and his wife have the passes. Seems like they go there every month... I may have to check it out now.

 

For those of you that might not know, or have forgotten, the castle was built by old man Vanderbilt's son. His siblings had built huge estates in the Northeast and the son decided to outdo them so he set out to do just that. He hired one of the best designers in the world to design this place, and while it was being built, the son traveled all over the world to furnish it when it was finished. Not being one of the best money managers in the world, he kind of overspent a bit and didn't have much money left after it's completion.

That's why it was opened for paying public tours in about 1930. The complete estate consisted of about 125,000 acres and was pretty well self-sufficient for the first forty years or so. Today the estate consists of about 8000 acres and is still owed by the family. The daughter married into a family that still manages the estate today with family still living in it until the late fifties.

I was standing in the library just looking at the room, which is about forty feet wide and 75 feet long with twenty or so foot ceilings. It holds about 23000 books. The complete room was built using only English Walnut except for the floors, which is red and white oak harvested locally. My estimate of today's cost, for the wood only, is somewhere around $250,000.00 bucks. I suspect that might be a bit on the conservative side. The tapestry room is hung with tapestries from the Fifteenth century.

The place is amazing indeed but I was disappointed that the gun room was not included in the tour.

 

I spent 6 weeks living/working on the estate back in 1987. I was working on a horticulture degree and did a short (unpaid) internship there. The Landscape Architect who planned the estate was Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape architecture and one of the most famous horticulturists worldwide in his time.

As I was an unpaid intern I did not get to see a lot of the nice stuff but I did sweat on quite a bit of the estate....

 

I believe they have a "architects" tour and a "servants" tour.
The architects tour you get to go out on the roof!