Biltmore's natural grandeur

I pedaled down a dirt path alongside the French Broad River, which flows through the rolling foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Rounding a bend, the trail led me to a small lake where a warm breeze plucked leaves from maple, sweet gum and birch trees. I stopped at the edge of the lake to enjoy the near-silence as a pair of ducks lazily floated through a blurry reflection of George Washington Vanderbilt's dream: Biltmore House.

Perched high on a hilltop a mile or so ahead of me, the 250-room manse -- the largest private home in America -- seemed unreal in that bucolic setting, no more a gilded reality than that shimmering reflection in the lake. But as I rode toward it, the spokes of my mountain bike whirring in the warm summer air, the 175,000-square-foot house came into view with overwhelming clarity. To call it sprawling is an understatement. The house has 33 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, 65 fireplaces and a seven-story dining room with a fireplace as big as a school bus.

The 8,000-acre estate and the French Renaissance chateau that lords over it is the intersection of the two great loves of George Washington Vanderbilt, a wealthy industrialist who came to Asheville to build a summer home where he could escape the smog and stresses of life back East.

I, too, came to Biltmore House for a few days to escape the pressures of the city (mine being Minneapolis). Earlier in the day I'd checked into the Inn on Biltmore Estate, a hotel on the grounds that offers an opportunity to live like a Vanderbilt. I rented a mountain bike from the Biltmore Outdoor Center and also made plans to explore on foot and by horseback. I'd go kayaking, too, if the weather permitted. For now the house would have to wait. I was itching to explore the grounds, the product of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the man who designed one of my favorite landscapes: New York City's Central Park.

I continued my ride toward the chateau-on-the-hill as I sailed through meadows in the 250-acre Deer Park. Olmsted modeled these woods after an English hunting preserve, just one of several distinct landscapes in an area that's nearly the size of 10 Central Parks. As I approached the house my thoughts shifted from the cloud shadows I watched passing over grassy pastures to the chattering masses of tourists I knew would be lined up on the lawn.

House took six years to build

I got to the house and leaned my bike against a wrought-iron fence while smelly buses lined up in front of an expansive grassy esplanade.

Vanderbilt, the youngest of eight children in one of the wealthiest families in America, wanted to build a summer house that would one-up those his siblings had built. So he toured Europe with his architect, Richard Morris Hunt, in search of ideas. He found it at the Chateau de Blois, which provided inspiration for the four-story spiral stair tower that seems to corkscrew right out of the ground. The house is four stories tall and nearly 400 feet long -- more ocean liner than house -- and is built of limestone and bricks with ornate limestone spires, filigreed railings and relief details.

There was so much to look at, but I pulled myself away, knowing I'd signed up for a tour the next day, and walked to the back terrace. I looked over the valley I'd just biked through, and gazed off to the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance. Vanderbilt owned everything in sight: 125,000 acres. But he died at 51 and his wife, Edith, ran into money troubles and had to sell most of the estate to the government, which preserved the view by establishing Pisgah National Forest.

Standing on the limestone terrace, which overlooks the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, I thought about the hundreds of craftsmen who came here from all over the world to help build the house. It took six years and was such a massive undertaking that a three-mile railroad spur from the nearest village was laid down to ferry materials and workers.

Not only did dump trucks not exist at the time, but most houses didn't have central heat or air conditioning. This one did. It even had its own electrical plant in the basement. Vanderbilt built his own brick factory and kiln, and a woodshop where acres of oak and walnut floors and paneling were milled.

With the sun setting and dinner waiting at the inn, I got back on the trail.

Along the way, a pair of Segways from the Outdoor Center buzzed past me, kicking up small puffs of dust in their wake. I passed cattle, too, grazing in pastures that surround the relatively modest farmhouse where George Vanderbilt's great-grandson, Bill Cecil Jr., now lives.

As it was when George and Edith lived here, the estate is still a working farm with a winery, gardens and cattle operation. The farm supplies food to the several restaurants on the estate, including the formal Dining Room at the Inn, which serves estate-raised beef and lamb. I stopped along a whitewashed fence near Cecil's house to imagine what it must be like to live here amid about a million house guests a year.

A tour of the house

I appreciated Olmsted's skills all the more the next morning as I hiked along one of several gravel paths that are part of a network of trails that connect the winery and River Bend Farm, a place where costumed workers try to re-create life on the farm and one of the few places on the estate where you're likely to see children. With trails that duck into thick woods and emerge onto sunny meadows, the estate has all the serenity of Central Park, but with views that are framed by mountains rather than buildings.

After breakfast in the dining room that included some local cheeses and Biltmore-made honey, I hopped a shuttle to the house and toured dozens of rooms that have been painstakingly restored. Some rooms have fabric wallcoverings and upholstery damaged by age, but have been restored fiber by fiber by European artisans.

I was eager to get behind the scenes, so I signed up for a rooftop tour, which led me through a rabbit's-warren of tiny hallways to Vandbilt's private observatory, and out onto the rooftop, where I was surrounded by limestone gargoyles, immense planes of slate roof shingles and miles of embossed gilded-copper roof flashing and gutters -- all of it, in some ways, was more impressive than the endless inventory of tapestries, vitrines and oil paintings inside the house.

And this is where I got the best view yet of this Loire Valley-like landscape, and another perspective on the convergence of Vanderbilt's two great loves: the landscape and the chateau. Below me was the small lake where just the day before I'd seen that shimmering reflection of the house, and the trails that I'd be exploring by horseback the next morning.

From the rooftop I headed to the basement, where a photo exhibit pays homage to the workers who built the house, and to the bowling alley, tiled swimming pool and gymnasium that Vanderbilt created for his guests. Construction of the house made Vanderbilt, who was only 27 when it began, the largest employer in western North Carolina.

Overnight, rain and lower temperatures -- signs of the coming fall -- had arrived and so I backed out of the horseback ride, opting instead to savor my last morning on the estate at the inn. I hunkered down alongside other Vanderbilts-for-a-day who sat on caned rocking chairs with their newspapers and teacups -- reproductions of those used in the house -- on a sweeping covered porch with a turreted roof. On a clear day, this is where guests line up with their mint juleps to take in the serene views that Olmsted was famous for, but I rocked quietly and watched the morning mist claim the last minutes of my life as a Vanderbilt.

Jim Buchta • 612-673-7376