June 27th - Ashville, NC

After morning flow class at the Ashville Yoga Center, we bought tickets for a tour of the Biltmore Estate - a 250-room French Renaissance chateau built between 1889 and 1895 by George Vanderbilt. It is the largest private home in the US - with more than four acres of floor space, including 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces. The architect was Richard Morris Hunt, who helped shape New York City with his designs for the 1902 entrance façade and Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The landscaping of the 8,000-acre estate was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the father of landscape architecture in America, who is best known for his design of New York’s Central Park.

Hank was initially not interested in touring an ostentatious display of the excesses of America's Gilded Age, but after viewing a short video at the visitor center and talking with some of the staff there, he was won over. George Vanderbilt's grandfather was a self-made man who started a ferry business with a modest $100 investment. He grew that business into a shipping and railroad empire. George inherited about $5 million and grew his wealth to more than $50 million by the time of his death in 1914. 

The house and grounds are amazing tributes to architecture, but George was quite a collector of art and he hired the sculptor Karl Bitter to create new works for the home, including "Boy Stealing Geese", the bronze centerpiece in the atrium. The house if filled with paintings, etchings and tapestry. Here is a link where you can see much of the art. 

We capped off the day with dinner at a sidewalk Cajun restaurant downtown.