Griffin Speaks

THE BILTMORE HOUSE

In May 2000 my family and I visited the Biltmore House. The magnificent mansion is located sixty miles east of Bryson City, located in Asheville, North Carolina. George Vanderbilt built it in 1895, approximately thirty years after slavery. When you visit the estate you will find two hundred and fifty rooms. Many of the furnishings are original. Mr. Vanderbilt’s art treasures collected through his world travels continue to fill the house.

When we visited the Biltmore house, my youngest son Christopher Michael Griffin was only five years old. He entered the front door, looked around and asked: “HOW MANY PEOPLE LIVE IN THIS HOUSE?” If you have never visited this magnificent house you should immediately plan a visit.

The house took six years and one thousand men to build. It has four acres of floor space containing two hundred-fifty rooms, sixty-five fireplaces, bathrooms, thirty-four bedrooms, and three kitchens. The staircase has one hundred and two steps. The chandelier has seventy-two electric light bulbs. The hall is seventy-four feet by forty-two feet and the dinner table could seat sixty-four hungry guests. Mr. Vanderbilt usually served eight course meals, which required fifteen utensils per guest to eat. The driveway leading up to the house is three miles long. The name “Biltmore” came from Mr. Vanderbilt combining two words, “Bilt,” for the region Holland, where the Vanderbilt family originated, and “more”, an old English word meaning upland rolling hills.

Mr. Vanderbilt married American socialite Edith Stuyvesant Dresser (1873-1958) in June 1898 in Paris, France. They lived at the Biltmore Estate with their only child, Cornelia (1900-1976). The surrounding grounds encompass one hundred twenty-five thousand acres. William Vanderbilt Cecil, Mr. Vanderbilt’s grandson, currently owns the house. The Biltmore Estate receives no governmental funding and is completely self-sufficient.

The descendants of George Vanderbilt decided not to live in the house, and do not use it for private functions. However, they continue to live in the area and are very active in the preservation of the estate. Cornelia Vanderbilt Cecil, only child to George and Edith Vanderbilt, and her husband John Amherst Cecil opened the house to the public in 1930 at the request of Asheville City officials.

Biltmore Estate is open every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas days. You can purchase tickets from 9:00 A.M.-5:00P.M. Daily January- May and 8:30 A.M.- 5:00P.M. Daily April-December. The tickets are very reasonable and worth every penny spent.

You will be spell bound to see how these people lived. I enjoyed the visit, but had a realization that it was way too much house. I remembered something that Mrs. Mable Haardt, Montgomery multi-millionaire and my parent’s neighbor in Haardt Estate once told me several years ago, at a party we attended at the home of Mrs. Ada Kay Morgan. Mrs. Haardt was playing the piano and I was standing next to her telling her how beautiful I thought Mrs. Morgan house was. She stopped her piano playing, looked up at me and said, “I HAVE NEVER SEEN A HOUSE MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN MY OWN!”

The Biltmore house is a beautiful house, but it is not as beautiful as the ONE YOU OWN!

Greg Griffin is a free lance writer. You can read his previous articles by visiting his webpage at www.greggriffin.com