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where their captains of industry had amassed their wealth.
Biltmore set a first, said Prof. Richard Longstreth, an archi-
tectural historian at George Washington University. Far
from the city, it was a working estate, with a lumber mill,
dairy and farms. In doing so, Vanderbilt’s vast enterprise set
a course that would influence western North Carolina’s eco-
nomic development as well as its politics.

“In many ways, it’s a stage set,” Longstreth said. Distance
from the other ballrooms and country estates of East Coast
society proved not to be a problem for the Vanderbilts. At
Biltmore’s zenith, guests were met at a nearby train station
in Biltmore village, to be escorted to the Vanderbilt house
from their private railway carriages, the Gulfstreams of their
age.

With servants and stacks of trunks, they came for days
to party, to ride on the well-groomed trails or hunt on the
grounds extending into four counties and, as Vanderbilt
and his mother did, to take in the mountain air.

There were other diversions, such as a series of rooms
known as the Bachelors Wing, where the Billiard Room is
the central focus. Today, the stale odor of cigars and ciga-
rettes is long gone, but the mounted trophies, deep-leather
seats and 24 racked cue sticks around billiard and pool
tables still beckon visitors.

Elsewhere, guests could use a 70,000-gallon indoor
swimming pool, featuring then-rare underwater lighting, a
Brunswick bowling alley with hand-set pins and a nearby
gymnasium supplied with equipment by A.G. Spalding. For
those with a literary bent, there was Vanderbilt’s 20,000
volume library, specializing in the arts and sciences.

For six years before its formal opening on Christmas Day
in 1895, a magazine noted, “British and Scottish stone-
masons chipped and hammered in the Asheville woods
while Mr. Vanderbilt toured Europe, sending back carload
after carload of French furntiure, Gothic cabinets, Jacobean
tables and Japanese ivories.

Walled Garden in the fall and spring, and
family in front of Biltmore

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