The 19th century American home that embodies the wealthy

George is fired. “He doesn’t necessarily fit the Vanderbilt mold,” Jenkins tells the BBC. “He’s not really involved in New York society. He doesn’t inherit any of the business responsibility for his family’s railway interests. But he starts collecting from a really young age. And so we see in the evolution of the house’s design his travels and his education and his relationships with artists and art dealers.” Over the years, the bookish George has traveled to Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, collecting knowledge and works of art to bring back to his homeland. Jenkins says Biltmore “ends up being an incredibly personal portrait of a man” who was involved in every detail of its planning.

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

Frederick Law Olmsted, famous for designing New York’s Central Park, created the Biltmore’s formal gardens, terraced landscaping, and a three-mile winding drive that leads to the estate. The road was full of trees and flowering shrubs that obscured the view of the house until a sudden turn revealed it, a strategy designed to elicit gasps of surprise.

William Abranozic

Before Hunt began his design, he and George traveled across France together researching 15th- and 16th-century palaces. The Biltmore’s exterior design was particularly inspired by the Chateau de Blois with its mix of eras. The side-by-side photographs in the book highlight the similarity in Renaissance Revival style incorporating medieval elements. Hunt added the gargoyle, along with some faces inspired by his own, as a special Easter egg. On other trips, George acquired 300 carpets at one stop in London, and from Cairo he sent plants and palm trees to the Biltmore Conservatory. But he added state-of-the-art technology throughout the house – a grand central staircase next to a narrow elevator, the first of its kind in a private home.