The 19th-Century US home that embodied the super-rich

George was set apart. Jenkins tells the BBC, “He doesn’t necessarily fit into a kind of Vanderbilt mould. He doesn’t really participate in New York society. He doesn’t inherit any of the business responsibility for his family’s railroad interests. But he starts collecting from a really young age. And so we see in the design evolution of the house his travels, his education, his relationships with artists and art dealers.” Over the years the bookish George travelled to Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, collecting knowledge and artworks to bring back home. Biltmore, Jenkins says, “ends up being this incredibly personal sort of portrait of a man,” who was engaged with every detail of its planning. 

When George decided to build his house in an isolated location – far from the extravagant Vanderbilt homes on Fifth Avenue in New York and in Newport, Rhode Island – he hired the renowned architect Richard Morris Hunt, who had created other mansions with European echoes for Vanderbilt relatives.

Frederick Law Olmsted, famous for having designed New York’s Central Park, created Biltmore’s formal gardens, terraced landscapes and a three-mile-long winding road leading to the estate. The road was lined with trees and flowering bushes that obscured the view of the house until a turn suddenly revealed it, a strategy designed to elicit gasps of wonder. 

William Abranozicz

Before Hunt started his design, he and George travelled through France together looking at 15th and 16th-Century chateaux. Biltmore’s exterior was especially inspired by the Chateau de Blois with its blend of eras. Side-by-side photographs in the book highlight the similarity in their Renaissance Revival style that incorporates medieval elements. Hunt added gargoyles, with some faces based on his own, like a private Easter egg. On other trips, George acquired 300 rugs in one stop in London, and from Cairo he sent back plants and palms for Biltmore’s winter garden. But he added up-to-the-minute technology throughout the house – a grand central staircase is next to a narrow elevator, one of the first in a private home.