Biltmore House is a French Renaissance-style mansion near Asheville, North Carolina, built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1888 and 1895. It is the largest privately-owned home in the United States, at 175,000 square feet (16,300 m) and featuring 250 rooms. Still owned by one of Vanderbilt's descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age. In 2007, it was ranked eighth on the List of Ameri...
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Biltmore House is a French Renaissance-style mansion near Asheville, North Carolina, built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1888 and 1895. It is the largest privately-owned home in the United States, at 175,000 square feet (16,300 m) and featuring 250 rooms. Still owned by one of Vanderbilt's descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age. In 2007, it was ranked eighth on the List of America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects.
In the 1880s, at the height of the Gilded Age, George Washington Vanderbilt, youngest son of William Henry Vanderbilt, began to make regular visits with his mother, Maria Louisa Kissam Vanderbilt (1821–1896), to the Asheville, NC area. He loved the scenery and climate so much that he decided to create his own summer estate in the area, which he called his "little mountain escape", just as his older brothers and sisters had built opulent summer houses in places such as Newport,...
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