Time capsule
Author examines ways Biltmore mansion intersected with American history
When author Denise Kiernan moved to Ashville, North Carolina, several years ago, she found the subject of her next book right in front of her — all 175,000 square feet of it.
She became entranced by Biltmore, the grand mansion built by George Vanderbilt from 1890 to 1895 on a mountain estate that grew to 125,000 acres. With 250 rooms, including 35 bedrooms plus 66 more for servants, Biltmore ended up the largest home ever built in the U.S.
But, as Kiernan chronicles in “The Last Castle,” her new work of nonfiction, Biltmore was a financial catastrophe, even for someone with the wealth of a Vanderbilt. It took Vanderbilt’s widow, Edith, to salvage Biltmore for generations to come.
Kiernan spoke with The Dispatch about Biltmore and her book.
Q: Do you remember the first time you visited Biltmore?
A: I first saw Biltmore when I was a teenager. My father was stationed in Fort Jackson in South Carolina and my mom drove my sister and me up to look at the house. ... It really made quite an impression on me as a kid. It was the first time I began to think about history not just as a list of events or battles or elections, but what did people do? How did they live? What was the music like? What did kids learn in school? ...
Biltmore is like a gigantic time capsule. It wasn’t just an empty structure. It was full of family possessions, and the setting was remarkable.
Q: What led you to write a book about the place?
A: My husband and I were living in Ashville so I went back to Biltmore and it made as much of an impression on me as it did when I was young. ...
Around 2012 or 2013, a few things happened. I had two visitors from New York who I took to Biltmore because that’s what you do here. They said, “Why don’t I know more about this place?” And around the same time, there was this crazy documentary called “The Queen of Versailles” about this Florida guy who was trying to build the biggest house in America. It was 90,000 square feet. I thought, “Wait, Biltmore is 175,000 square feet and they’re saying this is the largest house in America?” All these things kind of came together.
And as I started to do even initial research I was struck by how many ways in ■ “The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home” (Touchstone, 400 pages, $28) by Denise Kiernan which the house intersected with different significant moments in American history. It was a lens through which to view a much larger American experience.
Q: How many times have you been to Biltmore and does anything still surprise you?
A: Easily in excess of 100 times, I haven’t kept track. ...
The gardens still surprise. There’s always something new to see. And the house is so rich in detail that if you choose to linger in a particular room you didn’t linger in before, there’s always something new that catches your eye.
Q: What is your favorite place in the house or on the grounds?
A: While I really enjoy the downstairs, the bowels of the house, my favorite room has to be the library. As a lover of books, I so wish I had a library like that. It’s so awesome, so beautiful. I love the size. It could have been so much bigger, but it’s cozy.
Q: In researching the book, what surprised you the most?
A: There were a lot of things I came across. ... Some were trivial but fascinating, such as Edith’s family’s role in the creation of the teddy bear. I never saw that coming.
More broadly, I found the resilience of Edith and her sisters so impressive.
... There was just a succession of personal losses, compounded by financial struggles. For a period of time, it seemed relentless. ... She didn’t just slink away, which would not have been unusual at that time in history.
Q: Edith is the star of the book. But what of George? What did you make of him?
A: He wanted to do something different and he really, really did. There might have been a sense of escape involved by choosing to put the houses where he did, not that the setting doesn’t speak for itself, but I think he was looking for a project to throw himself into, and a house wasn’t an unusual thing to invest in at the time. ... Biltmore became this incredible, unique project for him that got him out of a smothering atmosphere in New York.
Q: You call Biltmore a wildly misguided masterpiece. Is it a masterpiece of design or merely of scale and opulence?
A: I’m a journalist, not an architect, but I appreciate a nice-looking house. I do think the design is stunning, bringing together the greatest talents of the time. There was no architect of the Gilded Age who could compete with Richard Morris Hunt, and to have the grounds shaped by the father of landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmstead, and that astonishing tile work of (Rafael) Guastavino, and to get Karl Bitter to do the sculptures and John Singer Sargent to do oil paintings. He bought together so many talents, and he knew who to bring in. ...
The house straddles two different worlds. It was technologically quite advanced for the time. ... It had electric call buttons, electric dumbwaiters, two elevators, indoor plumbing.
Q: How do you think Biltmore compares to other famous U.S. mansions, such as the Breakers or the Hearst mansion?
A: I absolutely think this is in a league of its own, from the sheer size of the landholdings, and the fact that so much of the family’s art and artifacts are still in the home makes such a difference. There are a lot of historic homes in America, so many have been decorated with period-appropriate furnishings. That’s so different than walking through and seeing the actual china the family used. There’s nothing in America that compares.
Q: What is Biltmore’s legacy?
A: I think a lot about legacy when I think about Biltmore. I do think it’s a window into American life especially at the turn of the 20th century. The forestry legacy is also tremendous. That is the cradle of American forestry, the first school of forestry in America. ... Biltmore is a huge, huge asset to American history and preservation, an incredibly valuable time capsule.
Q: Will the billionaire mansions of today produce this generation’s Biltmore?
A: I would like to think we will always have these kinds of places people can visit in the future because it’s a very different experience to walk through places than to read about them. ... I would like to think there’s something out there being built with care and attention to the surrounding grounds and lands. What would we want the next Biltmore to be, what that would look like, I don’t know.