July 13, 2013 – Asheville, NC and Knoxville, TN
Hi Everyone,
This will be a quick post. We arrived in the hills of Knoxville at the Volunteer Park and Campground in the community of Heiskell. It is about a half hour north of Knoxville. We have poor internet connectivity up here so it has been tough to post.
We visited the famous Vanderbilt estate in Asheville on Saturday and the weather was beautiful for the most part. Rain threatened but stayed away. The weather was cool. When we arrived at the entrance gate, our RV was led to a special spot at the bottom of the hill where we were able to purchase our tickets with little fuss and no line. The hydrangeas were in full bloom and beautiful as seen in the first photo that Elisa took. We were then ushered up the hill and the folks in RV’s were treated special, we were directed by the kind staff to a special parking area (photo 2). It was all very nice.
Unfortunately, no photos were allowed inside of the estate so the few shots we got were all from the ample grounds.
We are off to breakfast now, so I will update this later.
We are back –
There is so much about the Biltmore Estate that I didn’t know. For starters, I assumed that it was built by Cornelius Vanderbilt – one of the richest men in the world in the Mid-1800’s. It wasn’t. It was built by George Vanderbilt the grandson of Cornelius. George’s father William had doubled the size of the fortune Cornelius had amassed. George was the youngest of William’s eight children. When William died, he left the business and the bulk of his vast real estate holdings and finances to Geroge’s two older brothers. George inherited a mere $10 million at the time. Half this amount was tied up in an income producing trust. This left George with a lot of time to study many different subjects. He was fluent in 8 different languages and traveled the world extensively with his Mother. He gained an appreciation for the castles of France. In the 1880s he visited North Carolina with his Mother and promptly began buying land. By 1885 he had acquired more than 120,000 acres. He chose a 8000 acre parcel at the top of a bluff for the site of his “country home". When he surveyed the property, it had been entirely clear cut and was devoid of trees. He wanted his home surrounded by a forest. He also wanted the home to be surrounded by elaborate gardens and grounds. He enlisted the help of Richard Morris Hunt a renowned architect of the time to design Biltmore. Hunt had designed many other Vanderbilt mansions and had also designed the base for the Statue of Liberty. For the grounds he retained Frederick Olmstead, the designer of New York’s Central Park. To put the scale of the project into perspective for Olmstead, the land had been clear cut and it was the size of 800 NY Central Parks. A huge effort was mounted to plant thousands of trees of all sizes onto the property, in fact a forestry school sprung up on the grounds of the estate. For Hunt, the house to be designed would be the largest of its time. In fact, to this day it is still the largest private residence in the US. It boasts over 250 rooms (on the tour you see 43 rooms). it is vast and epic. Construction commenced in 1889 and was completed in 1895. The property was designed to be self sustaining. Lumber from other parts of the property was used to make furniture, doors and fixtures. Farms were developed, livestock raised, wild game was stocked as were fish in the lakes. A large dairy operation was also installed on the property. The dairy would come to play a pivotal role in the history of Biltmore.
George married Edith Vanderbilt and they had a single daughter. Unfortunately, George would die at a young age after suffering complications from an appendectomy in March of 1914. So he was only to enjoy this magnificent testament for 19 years. His widow Edith devoted herself to the preservation of the estate but the money soon began to run out. Edith gave much of the 120,000 acre estate to the federal government on the condition that it remain largely unaltered and to this day it is part of a national forest. George and Edith’s daughter, Cornelia married a gentlemen named Cecil, an Englishman who was the ambassador to the US. Cornelia inherited the estate and all the land when Edith passed away. By the 1930s and 1940s the estate began to fall into disrepair. Her husband formed the Biltmore Corporation aimed at preserving the mansion. Cornelia had 2 sons. When Cornelia passed away, the property was split. The older son took farmland leaving the younger son William Cecil with the mansion which had become outrageously expensive to maintain. The family continued to live in the house until the mid 1950-s even though by then, parts had been opened to the public. The younger son William, managed to save the mansion by reviving the dairy, the cows that George Vanderbilt had brought to the Estate in the 1880s were renowned for the quality of the milk they produced for the high concentration of butter fat in the milk. Those cows and the descendants of the original cows continued to produce the high quality milk. Today, the Estate and the Biltmore Corp, is controlled William Cecil II, the great grandson of George Vanderbilt.
As for the Vanderbilt fortune – the irony is that although George inherited just a small portion of the vast fortune that had been built by his Father and Grandfather, the Biltmore house is the most stunning monument to the Vanderbilt family. In fact within 75 years after the passing of Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1877 much of the wealth (estimated to be over $4 billion in todays value) was gone. The many mansions George’s brothers had built in NY and Newport Rhode Island and in Europe have since been torn down. Although there are still many wealthy Vanderbilts (e.g. Gloria Vanderbilt and her son Anderson Cooper from CNN) their wealth did not come from the original shipping and railroad empires of the senior Vanderbilts.
Photo 1 – Hydrangeas at the entrance to the Estate
Photo 2 – They treat the folks in RV’s like royalty and we get a special place to park
Photo 3 – I am standing 250 yards in front of the estate in order to fit it into the view of the camera.
Photo 4 – the view from the opposite direction toward the fountains and gardens.
Photo 5 – a view of the estate through the trees
Photo 6 – This was the carriage house and stables, later garages for automobiles that have now been turned into gift shops and cafes
Photo 7 – it is more than a 3 mile drive from the entrance to the estate. On the way out there was a snapping turtle lounging in the middle of the road.
Photo 8 – There are still operating farms on the estate grounds
Photo 9 – we cross the Tennessee river heading into Knoxville
Photo 10 – It is raining at our campground in the mountains north of Knoxville
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