Upstairs @ the Biltmore

Here's my big takeaway from the Biltmore Estate:  you didn't have to worry too much about meeting your daily step count goal.  It cost only $6 million for George Vanderbilt to construct it in 1889, just a little more than three times the asking price of the Dream House that Thom and I visited a month earlier.

I probably would have been more impressed if my childhood weekends in the Loire Valley hadn't included occasional chateaux visits.  Funny story:  my uncle once asked me how I liked the fireworks at Rye Playland.  "They're better at Disneyland," I replied.  He never forgot the comment and repeated it often, shaking his head every time.

Still, none of those dimly remembered chateaux included glorious floral displays and audio guides.  Or cost $84!

Live music at the entrance classed things up.  As if the estate needed that.  

Dinner for 38, anyone?  The dining hall is one of 250 rooms.  Size mattered during the Gilded Age.

Heat, too:  three fireplaces to keep the diners warm.

Here's where the men retired after dinner to smoke their cigars.  There's also a billiards room.

The architects operated under attention-to-detail and spare-no-expense mantras.  Fine craftsmanship everywhere you look.  It quickly overwhelms.

The fake butterflies did surprise me.  Fire the florists!

Thom on one of the landings of the enormous spiral staircase, my favorite part of the very dark house because it's one of the few naturally lit places.

Not counting the balcony of course, with unspoiled views.  After George's sudden death in 1911, his  heavily indebted estate sold 85,000 acres to the federal government, which became the Pisgah National Forest, one of the first in the eastern U.S. 

Sculptures of artisans flank each of the massive, arched windows.  This guy's a sculptor. Very meta.

Apparently, George was quite the reader, with 35,000 volumes in his library.  Not even Chris reads that much!

Tapestries in chateaux are de rigeur.

Props to the Vanderbilts for honoring the two men who designed the estate. Here's John Singer Sargent's portrait of Frederick Law Olmsted, long one of my heroes.

Sunlight hit this floral arrangement just right.

George had his own bedroom.  

His wife, Edith kept family portraits on her bedside table, one of the estate's few touches of warmth.  Imagine her reaction when the newlyweds arrived at their new abode for the first time:  "Honey, I knew you were loaded, but this is . . . beyond!"  Such a fortunate couple:  after their wedding in Paris they were supposed to sail home on the Titanic, but changed travel plans at the last minute.

The dining hall looks even bigger from above.  Did I mention it has a pipe organ?  But George gave the original to the Old Souls Church in the Biltmore Village shortly after opening the estate.  Maybe he, like Marx, understood that "religion is the opium of the people."

Each of the 35 guests room are named.  I definitely would have requested this one.

Edith Wharton and Isabella Stewart Gardner were among those invited.  During the 1905 holiday season, Edith wrote this to a friend:

“Yesterday we had a big Xmas fete for the 350 people on the estate – a tree 30 ft. high, Punch & Judy, conjuror, presents & ‘refreshments.’ It would have interested you, it was done so well & sympathetically, each person’s wants being thought of, from mother to last baby.”

Here's the room where it happened for the guests:  conversation, games and live music.

And, of course, a subtle reminder of where all that largess came from:  "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt's shipping business.  Fun fact: my grandfather worked for the New York Central Railroad, bought by the Commodore two decades before Opa was born in 1889.

Earl C. Ostrander, known to me as Opa, locomotive engineer.

My favorite tableau, a color coordinator's wet dream!

Cornelia, George and Edith's only child, was born here, in the Louis XV room.  Edith liked its light, something in short supply in America's largest home.