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Asheville Because the Biltmore Estate is so central to the Asheville experience, we concentrate upon it here. That is not to demean the city’s other attractions. Biltmore Estate, Highway 25, Asheville. The three-mile-long approach to the nation’s largest private residence is tiered in stair-step fashion to heighten the sense of drama, the feeling that something grand lies ahead. The road rises as it winds through forested ravines abloom seasonally with azaleas and rhododendron, passing woods and farmlands beneath a curtain of mountains all around. Beyond the final turn, iron gates and pillars topped by stone sphinxes open onto a massive front lawn leading to the Biltmore House. No ordinary house, this. George Washington Vanderbilt, grandson of the Commodore, wanted a private mansion in what he considered one of the most beautiful places in the world. Young Vanderbilt commissioned a friend, celebrity New York architect Richard Morris Hunt, to build the 250-room chateau in the style of those in France’s Loire Valley. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted surrounded the house with more than 8,000 acres of forests, parks and gardens. Six years and millions of dollars later, the house opened in 1895 as what the New York Times reported at the time was "the most valuable as well as most extensive private property in America." It makes the Breakers at Newport and San Simeon in California, both more showy and opulent, pale in size. Biltmore House, one suspects, could be America’s Versailles. The youngest of Vanderbilts, at age 33, outdid them all. Legion were the famous guests entertained by George and his wife, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser, until his death of complications from an appendectomy in 1914 at age 52. Their only child, Cornelia, lived here with her husband, John Francis Amherst Cecil, until 1930 when they opened the Biltmore House and Gardens to the public at the request of city officials, who hoped it would spur tourism in the area during the Depression.. The house is no longer lived in, and visitor fees and sales of Biltmore memorabilia and products pay the hefty operating costs (more than $40 million of estate earnings in the last fifteen years have been reinvested for the preservation of Vanderbilt’s original concept of a self-supporting European estate). The Cecils’ son, William Amherst Vanderbilt Cecil, who was born in his grandfather’s Biltmore House, surprised his New York banking colleagues in the early 1960s when he came home to oversee the Biltmore property and, against all bets, turned his first profit of $16 in 1968. He and his wife live in a smaller house that his mother built when she tired of the Biltmore. He heads the family’s Biltmore Company, whose principals now are his two grown children. The key to the Biltmore’s success is at least partly due to marketing, which is obvious from its slick web site to all the Biltmore products and memorabilia for sale in its various shops. Despite its size, the Biltmore House surprises by its lack of ostentation, except perhaps for its pedigreed furnishings and art objects. Not to mention the awesome 70-foot-high banquet hall with a table seating 64, the winter garden conservatory and the 90-foot-long Tapestry Gallery. Or the towering library with 10,000 volumes in eight languages that took curators four years to catalog. Or the billiards room that is bigger and taller than a small house. Many of the 85 rooms open to the public are more modest, given the circumstances, although the fact that most of the 34 bedrooms had private baths was unheard of at the time. (If the beds look small, we’re told, it’s because the rooms are so large. Even the servants’ quarters are the size of some of the smaller bedrooms at today’s B&Bs.) The downstairs kitchens and pantries overwhelm only in the aggregate; each is given over to a specialized function. The bowling alley, gymnasium and indoor swimming pool are less remarkable than the fact of their seventeen dressing rooms. Biltmore is unusual in that tours are self-guided, allowing visitors to browse at their own pace. Audio tape cassettes are available ($4 and worth it) to point out the nuances and detail the treasures the Vanderbilts collected across the world to fill their house. Tours end in the stable/courtyard area, where an array of shops, an ice cream parlor, a new bake shop and the Stable Café beckon. After touring the house, visit the 75 acres of Biltmore gardens, some considered the finest of their type in the land. The Azalea Garden, for instance, contains one of the nation’s most complete collections of native azaleas. Altogether, they comprise Olmsted’s biggest, most important and last work. Also worth a visit is the Biltmore Estate Winery. It’s based in renovated structures at the site of the original Biltmore Dairy, part of the most successful self-supporting historical property in America. Though one of the youngest wineries, the Biltmore is America’s most visited. It produces 75,000 cases of wine annually under three labels. The state-of-the-art facility is open for self-guided tours, followed by tastings in an excellent wine and gourmet shop. (828) 274-6333 or (800) 543-2961. Open daily except Thanksgiving and Christmas, 9 to 5. Adults, $29.95. Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site, 52 North Market St. His mother’s boarding house, in which the novelist grew up, is one of American literature’s most famous landmarks. In his epic autobiographical novel Look Homeward, Angel, Wolfe immortalized the 1883 Victorian structure originally called "Old Kentucky Home." Now eerily surrounded by encroaching office buildings at the edge of downtown, the interior is homey and full of memorabilia of the man and his times. The roof and exterior was somewhat shabby looking even before a damaging fire in 1998. An audio-visual program is shown on the hour in the modern visitor center off North Market Street. A half-hour tour of the house at 48 Spruce St. traditionally follows. The house was closed for an indefinite period following the fire. (828) 253-8304. Open April-October, Monday-Saturday 9 to 5, Sunday 1 to 5. Rest of year, Tuesday-Saturday 10 to 4, Sunday 1 to 4. Adults $1. The Asheville Urban Trail, downtown Asheville. Asheville was a sleepy little town in 1880, when the railroad breached the Blue Ridge Mountains and brought people of wealth and influence. It entered a boom period that lasted 50 years. The 27 stops on the Urban Trail show the results of that boom and its effect on the city today. An informative map guides the way, although you may find the small-type text difficult to read while walking the 1.6-mile route. Squares, sculptures and fountains are interspersed among such historic sites and architectural sights as the deco S&W Cafeteria building, the original Woolworth’s (now a Family Dollar store), the Grove Arcade and the Battery Park Hotel in which George Vanderbilt stayed with his mother before building his Biltmore estate. Most striking is the red brick Moorish Basilica of St. Lawrence, with its large elliptical dome, statues and minarets looking straight out of Europe. Most unexpected is the I.M. Pei-designed executive offices of the Biltmore enterprises at One North Pack Square. Shopping. Recently reborn downtown Asheville has a number of interesting shops and galleries, especially along Wall Street, Battery Park and Biltmore Avenue. The relocated and expanded Malaprops Bookstore/Café is a symbol of the rebirth. The real action for most visitors, however, is south of town at historic Biltmore Village, built in the late 1890s as a planned community opposite the entrance to the Biltmore Estate. Twelve square blocks of restored Tudor-style homes and buildings along tree-shaded streets have been converted into shops, galleries and restaurants. Extra Special Crafts Galleries. The Southern Highlands is at the center of a long tradition of exceptional mountain handcrafts. The famed Penland School and John C. Campbell Folk School, the nation’s oldest, have attracted artists since the 1920s. The emphasis has shifted from the preservation of traditional forms to creative expression in a variety of media. The largest showcase is the Southern Highland Craft Guild’s famed Folk Art Center, a must destination along the Blue Ridge Parkway at Milepost 382 just east of town. The main floor is devoted to the retail Allanstand Craft Shop, an offshoot of the nation’s first craft shop, which began a century ago in a rural community near Asheville. The upper level contains museum space, traveling exhibits, guild offices and a library. The guild also operates the Guild Crafts shop at 930 Tunnel Road. Also rewarding is the New Morning Gallery, a treasury of fine arts and crafts at 7 Boston Way in Biltmore Village. Owner John Cram, a leader in the area’s crafts movement, also runs the nearby Bellagio featuring "art to wear" in handcrafted jewelry and clothing, and two downtown galleries, Blue Spiral 1 at 38 Biltmore Ave. and American Folk Art & Antiques at 64 Biltmore Ave. Best of all perhaps is the Grovewood Gallery complex at the Homespun Shops, 111 Grovewood Road, near the Grove Park Inn Resort. Above the main gallery is a floor devoted to contemporary furniture made of exotic and native wood and iron, where one could pick up a couple of maple and leather gargoyle chairs for $1,600 each. Wonderful sculptures are on the lawns leading to the North Carolina Homespun Museum, a repository of the handwoven homespun cloth tradition founded by George and Edith Vanderbilt of Biltmore Industries. Inside the Grove Park inn, the Gallery of the Mountains displays fine crafts. Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places in the Southeast, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2000. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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