…behind velvet ropes, of course.
Biltmore is a lovely estate. What hasn’t been said about it? It’s monument to the beauty humans can create, and the work that not only the architects and landscape designer put into it, not to mention the hundreds of workers who built it and kept it running and the volunteers who tend it today, is commendable. A part of me wants to ask, rhetorically, though, “A 175,000 square foot house for three people? Is there nothing better that could have been done with the money?”
Obviously, I’m not the only one to ask the question. And I’m also not the only person to admit that the legacy of Biltmore is complicated. Its construction and maintenance did not just employed hundreds. In many cases, the work taught those folks skills that set them up in careers and enabled them to support their families. It brought tourism (a two-edged sword, I know) and, thus, wealth to the region.
All this is not to say that we didn’t enjoy our time there. The tour was informative and interesting, and we took lot of photos in the house and garden. Most of the interior shots are Mark’s. The rooms were generally too dark for my DSLR.
Biltmore was veiled in fog when we arrived.
But the fog lifted soon
The winter garden.
The ceiling in the winter garden is a fabulous structure.
The guest lounge.
George Vanderbilt’s bed.
Edith Vanderbilt’s bedroom.
A panorama of the salon between George’s and Edith’s bedrooms.
Note the hinged side of the sofa.
The formal dining room.
The other side of the formal dining room.
The tour was much more extensive, but I won’t show all of our photos. I do, however, want to include a few shots from the room in the basement that George and Edith’s daughter, Cornelia, painted with friends for a New Year’s Eve party.
We didn’t walk a lot of the property after the house tour. The grounds comprise 8,000 acres after all. We did, however, walk through most of the gardens.
Our day didn’t end at Biltmore, though. We rested for a bit, then we popped into Blue Spiral Gallery. It’s much bigger than we realized, and we’d only given ourselves about a half hour; we had to run through quickly. Many, many world-class works, but we were especially impressed with the works by Isaac Payne and Katie Walker.
After a very full day, we had appetizers at Thai Orchid and called it a day.