1/23/2022

I am here in Asheville, North Carolina, and yeah… my day here has been interesting! I woke up this morning still in quite a bit of pain after my fall at Fall Creek Falls yesterday. Because of the pain I decided that I would just take it easy and stick around town. By the end of the day though, I think I still ended up logging several miles worth of walking and adventuring.

Asheville is a quaint and clean small city and college town, but boy does it have some drama going on right now. It turns out that the city is under mask and vaccine mandates everywhere you go, and many people here are not happy about it! They are straight up protesting in the streets over it. I decided to go downtown for lunch (found some tacos), but then I left downtown pretty soon thereafter due to the sheer number of mask and vaccine protesters clashing with bystanders who were tsk-tsking the protesters. The whole place just had a weird vibe to it, like two completely and irreconcilable different cultures battling it out head-to-head on the streets in an effort to gain political prominence in the city. Not really my cup of tea for a Sunday, so I decided to instead make my way up into the hills to see a historic and jaw-dropping site: the Vanderbilt family’s Biltmore Estate.

The Biltmore Estate is the largest private residential estate in the United States, and its grounds rival the chateaus and palaces of European royalty. Unlike European royalty though, Biltmore was built on private money, namely the money of the Vanderbilt family during the late 1800s. Its palatial grounds have been an important site both in American history and in American culture, and it has been portrayed both as a place to be inspired from as the ultimate promise of the American dream, and a place to be detested as the prime symbol of late 1800s industrial era excess. The estate and its surrounding fields, mountains, roads, and rivers have been a constant go to for Hollywood as well, and have been featured in films from The Hunger Games to Forrest Gump to Last of the Mohicans. America’s largest private home was even featured as being owned by the ‘richest kid in the world’ in the 1994 Macaulay Culkin movie, Richie Rich. Odds are you know this home and these lands, even if only on a subconscious level.

Today, the Vanderbilts would be considered “Old Money” here in America, but in the 1800s they were “New Money.” Descended from Dutch immigrants of no particular repute, the Vanderbilt family got into the steamboat and railroad industries in New York in the early 1800s. Over the course of several generations, the family slowly amassed an absolute empire, owning most of the shipping and passenger routes in the Eastern United States. Inheriting much of the wealth in the late-1800s was George Washington Vanderbilt II. If he had anything to him it was taste. Slender, dark-haired, and pale, George was an avid collector of art, books, philosophies, tapestries, and antiques. He traveled extensively, purchased over 23,000 books over the course of his life, and over the decades became fluent in several foreign languages. Over his years, he got used to seeing his family’s ancestral residences in New York as well as the palaces and chateaus of Europe. In 1888 he decided to construct his own country mansion and, after acquiring 125,000 acres of woodland in North Carolina and employing architect Richard Hunt, the Biltmore was born.

Getting to the Biltmore takes some effort. After crossing through the entry gate, it takes about 20 minutes to drive the country estate, all owned by the Vanderbilt family, and reach the actual manor. My sister Sam came out here on a vacation a few years back, and she talked about how she and her husband spent a whole day just biking around the place. Now I see how that’s possible. The estate is nearly 200 square miles in size (Yes, I meant to say 200. And yes, I meant to say miles). It sort of baffles you as you are driving the estate to think that anyone could own so much land (landscaped and sculpted land, mind you).

And then there’s the inside of the Biltmore. Its decor and architecture not only rivals the chateaus and palaces that I saw during my time traveling Italy, it actually exceeds them with a perfect balance of decadent excess and subtle, refined taste. Above all, I think I was obsessed most with the massive library, the tapestries, and the art. My sister Lilly needs to come see this place for the art alone, as it offers a great study on lighting in painting. Vanderbilt seemed to go out of his way to find 1800s-era pieces with such a strong use of golds and yellows, to the point that the paintings felt like they were lit from within. Anyways…I’ll let you marvel at the photos of the place.

The music room was used to store and hide America’s national treasures and artwork during World War II. And then there was a bit of illuminati conspiracy to the place too (heck, this might be the birthplace of conspiracy theories about the illuminati). In the basement of the Biltmore is a room called the Halloween Room. The tour explained that the room was actually not originally used for Halloween at all, but simply displayed Russian folk art relating to a children’s performance that was done at the Biltmore in its early days. Now though, they use the room for Halloween parties and other family gatherings. I don’t know though. It’s a pretty creepy room to just exist in a basement. I guess I will leave it up to you to decide whether this room was really just a play and performance room in the basement of a giant estate, or whether it has a darker purpose. Them illuminati, always doing illuminati things!

Anywho, that was my day spent at the largest private residence in the US. Tomorrow morning will be a much more Christian experience. You see, I stumbled on yet another piece of history and Americana when I got here to Asheville. It turns out that the late Reverend Billy Graham made his home here in Asheville. As part of his ministry, he created a retreat for Christians called the Cove. Unlike the Biltmore, which costs a bunch to see and has a creepy Halloween Room, the Cove is completely free to all and keeps a chapel and meditation grove on site. I will be spending my morning there, and then I am heading to Charleston where I will be staying with an old Mercy High School family for a few days – the Curcios.

Cheers,

-Rob