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Biltmore An American Masterpiece
- GenresHistoryNonfictionTravel
135 pages, Unknown Binding
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 13, 2022
A beautiful photography book of one of the most infamous houses in America. Looking forward to visiting in the spring once they remove their mandates!
May 19, 2014
A very nice companion piece to an actual visit to Biltmore. I wish I had been reading it while I was touring the house. Because photography is not allowed inside the mansion, I'm really glad I bought this book. Not only does it have photos of those rooms I visited, but photos of many other rooms of the house as well that are only available by special (extra charge) tours. The history wasn't too in-depth, but definitely gave a good taste of the Vanderbilt family, the house and grounds, their support of their community, and their plans for the future.
July 5, 2017
One of those books you find in the gift shop with a bit of text to go with all the beautiful pictures. A nice primer to The Biltmore and the Vanderbilts, I plan to read more about them at some point. I was really surprised not to find more historical books available anywhere on the property, although the place is so big it's very possible I just missed them.
January 10, 2017
The letter from the great-grandson of George Vanderbilt was a nice personal touch and I liked hearing from a descendant of the original family.
It was so cool that this was the most ambitious home in America and that he wanted it to rival European manors. It was amazing that George's family was renowned for building palatial homes, and that he was the youngest and had outdone them all. I liked hearing about his family and how he came to build this house.
It was sweet how his dad, Cornelius, had a glass-roofer stable courtyard built for his beloved horses so they could exercise out of the weather. Such great insight into architecture and what people valued and what money could get you back then.
It was neat to learn how it got its name. Bildt was the Dutch town where his ancestors came from and more was an old English word that meant open, rolling land.
It's incredible that Richard Morris Hunt who was the architect and the most popular one in America had also designed the base of the Statue of Liberty. And the landscape designer, Frederick Law Olmsted had designed Central Park, the Capitol grounds and helped preserve Yosemite Valley.
After seeing the house and how antiquated everything is, it's easy to forget that it was top of the line in its time. They had central heating, elevators, electricity and plumbing that brought fresh water from a mountain reservoir a few miles away, refrigerators and fire alarms.
I liked learning about the types of activities they did back then. On Christmas Eve when it opened they had holiday feasts and a coaching party. They had many gala events and hosted famous guests. People came to play tennis, golf and croquet, and to picnic, ride, hunt and hike and parlor games, dancing and concerts in the evenings. It was good to hear that they were nice employers and paid good waves and had comfortable living quarters for their staff. They had servants and stable hands. Every year they would have a Christmas party for them and decorate a big tree and give gifts to them and their children.
It's such a shame how it started out being 125,000 acres but today is only 8,000. It's cool though that she cold 87,000 acres to the government and that became Pisgah National Forest, and George had wanted the public to enjoy it. I just went there this fall to see waterfalls and it's so pretty in those mountains.
I was surprised that Edith remarried in 1925, after George died of an emergency appendectomy in 1914.
It's so cool that in WWII people feared the Capitol would be attacked and so artworks were secretly sent to Biltmore for safekeeping. What a bit of history.
I liked learning about how it was self-sufficient. Their farms yielded fruits, vegetables, grain crops, meat and diary products and honey from 100 beehives.
The forest produced thousands of cords of firewood each year, which they sold like the lumber they professed at their mill. They had a nursery which grew millions of plants. I found all of it so interesting, especially the ways in which both Edith and George gave back to others. He bought a town and named it Biltmore Village and a school, hospital, church, shops and cottages were built. Edith worked with the Boys and Girls Club. She also started the School for Domestic Science which taught girls housekeeping, cooking and cleaning, and the Biltmore Estate Industry which taught crafts like woodworking and weaving. These skills helped them to get jobs They both started the Biltmore Parish Day School, an elementary school for local kids. It was so nice to learn that they were both good people that cared about others.
It was neat that Edith planned the day out and what her guests would need with her head housekeeper in the sitting room. I loved the little details about everyday life. Guests could choose between having breakfast with everyone or having a tray sent to their rooms. After eating, ladies would be attended to by their lady's maid and dressed for the day's activities.
One of Edith's sisters wrote that at 10:30 or 11 she would go out driving of walking, or feeding the swans with the children, or reading on the library's terrace.
I found it fascinating learning about the Louis XV room and that 3 generations of the family were born there. During the 19th century it was common for women to give birth in a different room besides their bedroom. They usually rested for weeks, so this room that had views of the gardens and terraces would have been a nice environment. I thought that room was so cool with how it descended before it led to the balcony doors. That would have been a cool niche to hang out in.
It was unusual for bathrooms to have tub, sink and toilet, so that was a sign of luxury and wealth. Most of the bathrooms didn't have sinks, and even though they had hot and cold water, it was custom that guests washed their hands and faces with basins in their rooms. The staff would bring the hot water.
It's so fascinating that each activity in the 1890s had its own dress code, so men and women had to change several times a day. I wondered about the dressing rooms there, namely the glass windows on the doors which would allow people walking by to see you changing. They were used by men and women to change for recreational activities. Men had one hall and women had another. It saved guests from having to walk from their bedrooms to the basement immodestly attired.
I ate up the information about the servants and running the household. Guests didn't go downstairs in the servant areas, and the servants had to work without intruding on the family and their guests. There's a bill of sale that lists 28 lbs of lamb legs and loins, 52 lbs of prime beef ribs, 22 broiling and roasting chickens, 62 lbs of muskmelons and 2 baskets of peaches. Food was bought in bulk. They had walk-in food coolers which were a novelty, because refrigeration was rare in the late 1800s. Most houses used iceboxes and spring houses.
Servants lived in separate halls depending on their sex and position. They chairs, dressers, wardrobes and iron beds in their rooms. I was surprised that they even had monogrammed chamber sets. It's amazing that they had a call box. The residents could press a button in their rooms and summon the staff, which rang a bell and caused an arrow to rise and show which room had made the call.
They sometimes ordered bread from a French bakery in Asheville, but most baked goods were made in the kitchens by the staff. The pastry kitchen was really cool because they made all kinds of popular breads and rich confections. It made me want to eat some, they looked so good in the picture. The meat brought back from shooting parties often made several dishes in one meal.
Each morning work in the kitchen started early when the scullery maid would stoke the oven firebox with wood or coal. The kitchen staff would set the work table with utensils for the cook. Meals made in the basement kitchens had to be taken to the first floor butler's pantry outside the banquet hall, where they were put on serving dishes. The servants that did this were called "tweenies" bcuz they brought food between the kitchens and dining rooms. Warming carts were used to transport food, but there were also dumbwaiters from the kitchen pantry leading upstairs. One was electric and the other had to be done manually.
Professional chefs ate in the main kitchen, and the chef's assistant or second chef made food for the staff. A dining-hall maid served the food, cleaned the room and washed the utensils. Servants usually had breakfast, dinner, supper and mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks every day. Dinner at 12 was the biggest meal of the day, which was usually a soup course, meat course with vegetables and a dessert course. They ate supper early at 5 or 5:30 so they were free to serve the family's supper later.
The stables even had living quarters for single male servants. The stable hands consisted of grooms, a harness man, an exerciser and coachman, who supervised the grooming, drove family and guests in carriages, and helped riders onto the horses.
In America in the late 1800s the housekeeper was the highest-ranking servant. They oversaw all of the staff except those in the kitchen. The one at Biltmore had her own suite of rooms with a large bedroom, bath and closet. Her room overlooked the service courtyard so she could see her staff coming and going. Her room even had a telephone so she could talk to the house staff after she retired at night. She had to supervise the house staff, manage household expenses and track supplies, and direct routine and seasonal cleaning of the house.
I liked the picture of the marriage chest at the foot of the bed. I wish info had been included on that.
It was so cool how a friend and writer of George's dedicated his book to him, because he wrote the book while there. Paul Leicester Ford imagined Mount Pisgah and the French Broad River as he read and it's so cool an author thought so much of NC.
Male servants lived on the second floor of the stable and carriage house, and female servants lived on the 4th floor of the house. There was even a hall where they could sit and socialize when off duty. There were assigned rooms. They were treated well, and their rooms had heating. electricity and plumbing. The housemaids cleaned guest bedrooms, aired out the beds every morning, emptied ashes from the fireplace, and laid a new fire. Parlor maids tended public rooms, dusted, cleaned the floors and rugs and sometimes waited at large formal dinners. Laundresses cleaned, dried, ironed and folded bed, bath and table linens. Visiting lady's maids helped their mistress dress and undress, prepared bath and toilet, and cleaned, darned and packed her clothes. Rugs, lamps, porcelain bowls and pitchers were provided in rooms. There were two bathrooms for staff to use on the 4th floor, one at each end. Each room had a chamber pot so she wouldn't have to go down the cold hall in the winter.
Servants mended the family's clothing and their own in their hall. There were rocking chairs around a fireplace, a bookcase full of books, and pictures on the wall of Charles' Dickens' characters. They could talk, have tea, crochet or read.
Most maids started working at 6am and stopped at 9. They had two hours off each afternoon, but had to be on call. They had one afternoon and one evening off every week, and a half day off every other Sunday. There was a call box and telephone in their hall so they could be contacted at all times. When the bell rang they had to call the room that dialed the phone to see what was needed.
It's such a shame that Olmsted lamented that Vanderbilt and his guests always missed the best time for the plants to bloom because they traveled so much. It's amazing the amount of work he put into it, shaping the landscape and planting conifers and evergreens at the entrance so they'd always look good, and designing the road to wind through the property and be surrounded by trees to seem mysterious and build anticipation for the view of the place. I was definitely looking all around on the bus ride for the first view of the house. It was really exciting when I finally saw it though the trees. It's nice that Hunt, who was apparently a tough critic, wrote to Vanderbilt saying didn't Olmsted do wonders with the approach road and it alone will give him lasting fame. It's funny, I didn't even realize the gate house or road had been built in their time or that everything was so purposeful. That makes it so much more special.
It's so cool that back in those days guests would stay for weeks or months at a time. I can't imagine having people over that long. I had no idea what the Esplanade was when they mentioned a view of it from the house, until pg 101. It's the forecourt of the house, including the front lawn and the stairway leading up to the hill and the gardens beyond. Guests were encouraged to hike in the forest, play lawn games and watch the sunset from benches. Guests wanting to stick close to the house could go out on the terrace. When I just went to Biltmore over a week ago, the flowers weren't in bloom bcuz it's winter, but it's cool to know the terrace has wisteria bcuz I love that, and trumpet creepers.
Guests could watch tennis and croquet matches in the Italian garden from the shaded pergola.
It's cute that their daughter took swims in the fountain on the front lawn.
I was blown away when I read that Mr. Vanderbilt replaced Gifford Pinchot, the first American forester, with Dr. Carl Schenck because while at NC State University in my forestry class we would go out to the Carl Alwin Schenck memorial forest. Absolutely blown away that the whole time my sister and I were in those woods we had no idea that it was named after a man that worked at Biltmore Estate. Amazing! And even more unreal bcuz it was so casual the way the teacher would say "We're going out to Schenck" and we never knew what the history was. Cool to follow in the footsteps of someone that worked at such a place, and founded the first forestry school.
It's neat that they produced eggs, milk, butter, cottage cheese and their famous ice cream and sold it in Asheville and the Southeast. It was cool how they had their own milkmen that delivered products in trucks. I found it a real shame that the dairy was converted into the winery. While there I also thought it such a waste that the stables were turned into shops and restaurants. It felt like such a ruination of history.
It's so sweet that Edith rode on horseback to deliver wool to women in secluded areas.
There were 2 manager's cottages beside the barn, two smaller cottages for the foreman, and 8 worker's houses in a row. There was also a boarding house for the families of the dairy workers. The kids would meet on the wagon to tire to the Biltmore school together, which had cross seats and was pulled by 2 horses.
It was interesting to hear that tenant farmers who lived on the west side of the estate took ferries across the French Broad River. I saw that and was surprised at how wide the river was, and that it's believed to be the 3rd oldest river after the Nile and the New River, which is also in NC. They did this to pick up supplies and attend social events. Edith threw an Estate Exhibition for employees and their families.
I didn't care for the winery info. It seemed boastful that they've won so many awards and sell so much. They went way too into detail on growing grapes and producing wine and what conditions they're made in and what type goes best with what kind of foods. It seemed like they were trying to sell more wine. That's when I checked out and didn't enjoy the end of the book which focused on their trademarks, including bedding and food which is for sale. It didn't read like the rest of the book and seemed aimed at drawing more money.
It was so cool that this was the most ambitious home in America and that he wanted it to rival European manors. It was amazing that George's family was renowned for building palatial homes, and that he was the youngest and had outdone them all. I liked hearing about his family and how he came to build this house.
It was sweet how his dad, Cornelius, had a glass-roofer stable courtyard built for his beloved horses so they could exercise out of the weather. Such great insight into architecture and what people valued and what money could get you back then.
It was neat to learn how it got its name. Bildt was the Dutch town where his ancestors came from and more was an old English word that meant open, rolling land.
It's incredible that Richard Morris Hunt who was the architect and the most popular one in America had also designed the base of the Statue of Liberty. And the landscape designer, Frederick Law Olmsted had designed Central Park, the Capitol grounds and helped preserve Yosemite Valley.
After seeing the house and how antiquated everything is, it's easy to forget that it was top of the line in its time. They had central heating, elevators, electricity and plumbing that brought fresh water from a mountain reservoir a few miles away, refrigerators and fire alarms.
I liked learning about the types of activities they did back then. On Christmas Eve when it opened they had holiday feasts and a coaching party. They had many gala events and hosted famous guests. People came to play tennis, golf and croquet, and to picnic, ride, hunt and hike and parlor games, dancing and concerts in the evenings. It was good to hear that they were nice employers and paid good waves and had comfortable living quarters for their staff. They had servants and stable hands. Every year they would have a Christmas party for them and decorate a big tree and give gifts to them and their children.
It's such a shame how it started out being 125,000 acres but today is only 8,000. It's cool though that she cold 87,000 acres to the government and that became Pisgah National Forest, and George had wanted the public to enjoy it. I just went there this fall to see waterfalls and it's so pretty in those mountains.
I was surprised that Edith remarried in 1925, after George died of an emergency appendectomy in 1914.
It's so cool that in WWII people feared the Capitol would be attacked and so artworks were secretly sent to Biltmore for safekeeping. What a bit of history.
I liked learning about how it was self-sufficient. Their farms yielded fruits, vegetables, grain crops, meat and diary products and honey from 100 beehives.
The forest produced thousands of cords of firewood each year, which they sold like the lumber they professed at their mill. They had a nursery which grew millions of plants. I found all of it so interesting, especially the ways in which both Edith and George gave back to others. He bought a town and named it Biltmore Village and a school, hospital, church, shops and cottages were built. Edith worked with the Boys and Girls Club. She also started the School for Domestic Science which taught girls housekeeping, cooking and cleaning, and the Biltmore Estate Industry which taught crafts like woodworking and weaving. These skills helped them to get jobs They both started the Biltmore Parish Day School, an elementary school for local kids. It was so nice to learn that they were both good people that cared about others.
It was neat that Edith planned the day out and what her guests would need with her head housekeeper in the sitting room. I loved the little details about everyday life. Guests could choose between having breakfast with everyone or having a tray sent to their rooms. After eating, ladies would be attended to by their lady's maid and dressed for the day's activities.
One of Edith's sisters wrote that at 10:30 or 11 she would go out driving of walking, or feeding the swans with the children, or reading on the library's terrace.
I found it fascinating learning about the Louis XV room and that 3 generations of the family were born there. During the 19th century it was common for women to give birth in a different room besides their bedroom. They usually rested for weeks, so this room that had views of the gardens and terraces would have been a nice environment. I thought that room was so cool with how it descended before it led to the balcony doors. That would have been a cool niche to hang out in.
It was unusual for bathrooms to have tub, sink and toilet, so that was a sign of luxury and wealth. Most of the bathrooms didn't have sinks, and even though they had hot and cold water, it was custom that guests washed their hands and faces with basins in their rooms. The staff would bring the hot water.
It's so fascinating that each activity in the 1890s had its own dress code, so men and women had to change several times a day. I wondered about the dressing rooms there, namely the glass windows on the doors which would allow people walking by to see you changing. They were used by men and women to change for recreational activities. Men had one hall and women had another. It saved guests from having to walk from their bedrooms to the basement immodestly attired.
I ate up the information about the servants and running the household. Guests didn't go downstairs in the servant areas, and the servants had to work without intruding on the family and their guests. There's a bill of sale that lists 28 lbs of lamb legs and loins, 52 lbs of prime beef ribs, 22 broiling and roasting chickens, 62 lbs of muskmelons and 2 baskets of peaches. Food was bought in bulk. They had walk-in food coolers which were a novelty, because refrigeration was rare in the late 1800s. Most houses used iceboxes and spring houses.
Servants lived in separate halls depending on their sex and position. They chairs, dressers, wardrobes and iron beds in their rooms. I was surprised that they even had monogrammed chamber sets. It's amazing that they had a call box. The residents could press a button in their rooms and summon the staff, which rang a bell and caused an arrow to rise and show which room had made the call.
They sometimes ordered bread from a French bakery in Asheville, but most baked goods were made in the kitchens by the staff. The pastry kitchen was really cool because they made all kinds of popular breads and rich confections. It made me want to eat some, they looked so good in the picture. The meat brought back from shooting parties often made several dishes in one meal.
Each morning work in the kitchen started early when the scullery maid would stoke the oven firebox with wood or coal. The kitchen staff would set the work table with utensils for the cook. Meals made in the basement kitchens had to be taken to the first floor butler's pantry outside the banquet hall, where they were put on serving dishes. The servants that did this were called "tweenies" bcuz they brought food between the kitchens and dining rooms. Warming carts were used to transport food, but there were also dumbwaiters from the kitchen pantry leading upstairs. One was electric and the other had to be done manually.
Professional chefs ate in the main kitchen, and the chef's assistant or second chef made food for the staff. A dining-hall maid served the food, cleaned the room and washed the utensils. Servants usually had breakfast, dinner, supper and mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks every day. Dinner at 12 was the biggest meal of the day, which was usually a soup course, meat course with vegetables and a dessert course. They ate supper early at 5 or 5:30 so they were free to serve the family's supper later.
The stables even had living quarters for single male servants. The stable hands consisted of grooms, a harness man, an exerciser and coachman, who supervised the grooming, drove family and guests in carriages, and helped riders onto the horses.
In America in the late 1800s the housekeeper was the highest-ranking servant. They oversaw all of the staff except those in the kitchen. The one at Biltmore had her own suite of rooms with a large bedroom, bath and closet. Her room overlooked the service courtyard so she could see her staff coming and going. Her room even had a telephone so she could talk to the house staff after she retired at night. She had to supervise the house staff, manage household expenses and track supplies, and direct routine and seasonal cleaning of the house.
I liked the picture of the marriage chest at the foot of the bed. I wish info had been included on that.
It was so cool how a friend and writer of George's dedicated his book to him, because he wrote the book while there. Paul Leicester Ford imagined Mount Pisgah and the French Broad River as he read and it's so cool an author thought so much of NC.
Male servants lived on the second floor of the stable and carriage house, and female servants lived on the 4th floor of the house. There was even a hall where they could sit and socialize when off duty. There were assigned rooms. They were treated well, and their rooms had heating. electricity and plumbing. The housemaids cleaned guest bedrooms, aired out the beds every morning, emptied ashes from the fireplace, and laid a new fire. Parlor maids tended public rooms, dusted, cleaned the floors and rugs and sometimes waited at large formal dinners. Laundresses cleaned, dried, ironed and folded bed, bath and table linens. Visiting lady's maids helped their mistress dress and undress, prepared bath and toilet, and cleaned, darned and packed her clothes. Rugs, lamps, porcelain bowls and pitchers were provided in rooms. There were two bathrooms for staff to use on the 4th floor, one at each end. Each room had a chamber pot so she wouldn't have to go down the cold hall in the winter.
Servants mended the family's clothing and their own in their hall. There were rocking chairs around a fireplace, a bookcase full of books, and pictures on the wall of Charles' Dickens' characters. They could talk, have tea, crochet or read.
Most maids started working at 6am and stopped at 9. They had two hours off each afternoon, but had to be on call. They had one afternoon and one evening off every week, and a half day off every other Sunday. There was a call box and telephone in their hall so they could be contacted at all times. When the bell rang they had to call the room that dialed the phone to see what was needed.
It's such a shame that Olmsted lamented that Vanderbilt and his guests always missed the best time for the plants to bloom because they traveled so much. It's amazing the amount of work he put into it, shaping the landscape and planting conifers and evergreens at the entrance so they'd always look good, and designing the road to wind through the property and be surrounded by trees to seem mysterious and build anticipation for the view of the place. I was definitely looking all around on the bus ride for the first view of the house. It was really exciting when I finally saw it though the trees. It's nice that Hunt, who was apparently a tough critic, wrote to Vanderbilt saying didn't Olmsted do wonders with the approach road and it alone will give him lasting fame. It's funny, I didn't even realize the gate house or road had been built in their time or that everything was so purposeful. That makes it so much more special.
It's so cool that back in those days guests would stay for weeks or months at a time. I can't imagine having people over that long. I had no idea what the Esplanade was when they mentioned a view of it from the house, until pg 101. It's the forecourt of the house, including the front lawn and the stairway leading up to the hill and the gardens beyond. Guests were encouraged to hike in the forest, play lawn games and watch the sunset from benches. Guests wanting to stick close to the house could go out on the terrace. When I just went to Biltmore over a week ago, the flowers weren't in bloom bcuz it's winter, but it's cool to know the terrace has wisteria bcuz I love that, and trumpet creepers.
Guests could watch tennis and croquet matches in the Italian garden from the shaded pergola.
It's cute that their daughter took swims in the fountain on the front lawn.
I was blown away when I read that Mr. Vanderbilt replaced Gifford Pinchot, the first American forester, with Dr. Carl Schenck because while at NC State University in my forestry class we would go out to the Carl Alwin Schenck memorial forest. Absolutely blown away that the whole time my sister and I were in those woods we had no idea that it was named after a man that worked at Biltmore Estate. Amazing! And even more unreal bcuz it was so casual the way the teacher would say "We're going out to Schenck" and we never knew what the history was. Cool to follow in the footsteps of someone that worked at such a place, and founded the first forestry school.
It's neat that they produced eggs, milk, butter, cottage cheese and their famous ice cream and sold it in Asheville and the Southeast. It was cool how they had their own milkmen that delivered products in trucks. I found it a real shame that the dairy was converted into the winery. While there I also thought it such a waste that the stables were turned into shops and restaurants. It felt like such a ruination of history.
It's so sweet that Edith rode on horseback to deliver wool to women in secluded areas.
There were 2 manager's cottages beside the barn, two smaller cottages for the foreman, and 8 worker's houses in a row. There was also a boarding house for the families of the dairy workers. The kids would meet on the wagon to tire to the Biltmore school together, which had cross seats and was pulled by 2 horses.
It was interesting to hear that tenant farmers who lived on the west side of the estate took ferries across the French Broad River. I saw that and was surprised at how wide the river was, and that it's believed to be the 3rd oldest river after the Nile and the New River, which is also in NC. They did this to pick up supplies and attend social events. Edith threw an Estate Exhibition for employees and their families.
I didn't care for the winery info. It seemed boastful that they've won so many awards and sell so much. They went way too into detail on growing grapes and producing wine and what conditions they're made in and what type goes best with what kind of foods. It seemed like they were trying to sell more wine. That's when I checked out and didn't enjoy the end of the book which focused on their trademarks, including bedding and food which is for sale. It didn't read like the rest of the book and seemed aimed at drawing more money.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 24, 2023
This is a good read prior to a tour of Biltmore. It is more in depth than the tour and has photographs of rooms not included on the traditional tour. I would have loved it more if it had more history included.
May 19, 2024
Great recap of Biltmore Estates. Wish I had read this prior to my visit, it sparked so many questions and ah-ha’s to things I saw during my trip. So much history packed into this book - a nice mix of pictures and text!
February 6, 2017
My mom bought this at the gift shop while we were at Biltmore before Christmas. It was so interesting to see more of the rooms on display at Biltmore, ones we didn’t get to see on our tour.
We flipped through the pictures and read a little bit of it when we got back to our hotel that night.
I loved learning more about the family, too, because I really didn’t know anything about them. I wanted to hear more, however. About their life stories; George and Edith marrying, and their daughter and her husband, and their descendants. It mentioned very little, like how George and Edith would have breakfast in the sitting room in between their bedrooms, but that’s all it mentioned on them. I wanted more!! Anecdotes or little stories of them would have been great. I wish there was a book like that out there!
I loved the tidbits about the time period, and how they would have lived then, like the daily life with them and their servants, how their clothes were handled, the sorts of entertainment there was at Biltmore, the glimpse of what it would have been like to be a guest there, and their self-sustainable farm.
This would be a great book for anyone who’s been to Biltmore and didn’t get the privilege of listening to the audio tours, or just anyone interested in Biltmore. Great picture and informational book!
We flipped through the pictures and read a little bit of it when we got back to our hotel that night.
I loved learning more about the family, too, because I really didn’t know anything about them. I wanted to hear more, however. About their life stories; George and Edith marrying, and their daughter and her husband, and their descendants. It mentioned very little, like how George and Edith would have breakfast in the sitting room in between their bedrooms, but that’s all it mentioned on them. I wanted more!! Anecdotes or little stories of them would have been great. I wish there was a book like that out there!
I loved the tidbits about the time period, and how they would have lived then, like the daily life with them and their servants, how their clothes were handled, the sorts of entertainment there was at Biltmore, the glimpse of what it would have been like to be a guest there, and their self-sustainable farm.
This would be a great book for anyone who’s been to Biltmore and didn’t get the privilege of listening to the audio tours, or just anyone interested in Biltmore. Great picture and informational book!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 26, 2017
Enjoyed reading and learning about the history of Biltmore (beginning pages) and its lasting legacy (end pages). Middle part is also interesting as it informs about the furnishings of the estate. No mention is made of the profligacy of the only daughter of George and Edith Vanderbilt, Cornelia. She was on hand with her husband John Amherst Francis Cecil at the opening of Biltmore to the public in March 1930. She even gave a speech, part of which is included in the book. When her father, George Vanderbilt died, Cornelia inherited Biltmore Estate in a trust. (Her mother Edith still lived there.) Cornelia's descendants now own and manage the Biltmore. / According to Wikipedia, Cornelia grew bored of Biltmore and left her husband and two sons in 1934 and went to New York to study art. Then she divorced Cecil and moved to Paris and eventually London, England, where she married twice and dyed her hair bright pink. She never returned to the U.S., not even for her mother's funeral. She changed her name to Mary. She was cremated and her ashes were buried with her last husband, William Goodsir. Words were chosen for a marker, but never added. The inscription was to have read, "Interred here are the ashes of Cornelia Mary Goodsir Died 7 Feb 1976 aged 75 yrs." Cornelia's grave is without identification. (This info is from findagrave.com)
February 16, 2021
I loved this! It gives great insight into the Biltmore, the history, the rooms, the people, the legacy and the future of the Biltmore and the Biltmore company. Its a great companion book to have after visiting the Biltmore. However I would suggest to read this book before you visit, that way you can keep an eye out for paintings, furniture, and artifacts while taking a tour of the house, that are mentioned in the book.
May 24, 2021
I visited Biltmore for the first time in 2013 and purchased this book as a souvenir since interior photography was not permitted. I had never gotten around to reading the book until this year. Definitely validated my desire to go back to do more of the specialty tours, as well as visit during the holidays as the decorations must be breathtaking then.
July 1, 2024
Loved this book! Got this during our first trip to the Biltmore estate and absolutely loved continuing to get more information upon our return as well. Very interesting and even includes some of the rooms we didn’t see for one reason or another. The only thing I wish would be included is before and after pictures during the renovations! 10 out of 10 recommend!
January 25, 2019
would have liked it even more if it had included more information about the family. enjoyed our visit there very much and this book is great if you plan to visit and want to familiarize yourself with the estate before going.
April 10, 2021
Bought this book after touring Biltmore (and reading The Last Castle). Informational, good coverage of the house and grounds. Not much history- for that you'll want The Last Castle, but a good overview of how the house is currently shown and reflected.
June 11, 2023
Lovely photos of this wonderful house with descriptions of items not included left me wanting. This is a great overview of the Biltmore estate with less detail than I would have preferred. Included were photos of rooms not included in my last tour, which led me to seek these online.
January 21, 2025
Lovely companion book to our recent trip to the Biltmore mansion. Along with the pictures is "a lot of reading, so Mom will like it" (that's a quote from my kids). I agree, because I love the history provided along with the views.
May 10, 2017
Fun to read about it after seeing it!
July 6, 2020
This place was so amazing. I want to go back.
September 16, 2022
We purchased this book from one of the giftshops at Biltmore. Amazing place, amazing book.
November 10, 2025
Definitely more of a coffee table book. but cool info
August 30, 2016
Enjoyed visiting the Biltmore and then learning even more and being able to share and refer back to it via this book. It was a great gift from a friend.
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