vanderbilt

The past two weeks have been busy enough to leave me either too preoccupied or too tired to spend much time with the old weblog. Now that this particular storm has passed, I’ve had some time to pull together thoughts and photographs from a recent trip to the Biltmore estate in Asheville, North Carolina.

An incredibly generous neighbor gave us a pair of guest passes to “America’s largest home.” (I’m still not sure how to thank her for that.)

It’s really quite an ambitious undertaking to try and see the whole of Biltmore in one afternoon, but we gave it a good try. The gardens and grounds offer a number of walking paths, and the dogs were happy to join us for a sunny afternoon.

The estate is at once impressive and absurd. I kept having mixed feelings about the place. It’s an incredible display of architecture and craftsmanship and yet I couldn’t help but think about the expense and resources that went into creating this home for one man and his family. The estate is a odd coupling of nineteenth century decadence and twenty-first century commercialism; one of the nation’s earliest bowling alleys, over 40 bathrooms when the average home in America had none and then gift shops, a chocolate shop and a number of food vendors await visitors upon exiting the house tour.

All in all, we had a nice time and I would certainly consider returning (especially with free passes again). I wonder what the spring or summer gardens would look like?