ONTD Original: The Biltmore Estate, the Vanderbilts, and Hollywood

[squirrels_oh_no]

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The Biltmore Estate might be America's largest private home and a tourist destination visited by over one million visitors to the Asheville, North Carolina area each year, but its connections to Hollywood, the film industries, and a few well-known celebrities via a now mostly broke old money dynasty run deeply. A full deep dive into its legacy and

Comments

[britt_m_89]

My favorite part of the house was the swimming pool.

[squirrels_oh_no]

I like how in Richie Rich one of the kids asks if it has a pool, and the answer is yes, yes it does.

[archersangel]

Meanwhile, in the fall of the family from their perch as the once richest family in America, their 10 mansions on Fifth Avenue were torn down.
So many of those grand mansions on 5th Ave. met the same fate. It's interesting how a city changes like that; homes of rich people & now a shopping area.
It was once considered the hinterlands until Aunts of Edith Wharton built there. Their last name was Jones & supposedly that's where "keeping up with the Joneses" comes from.

I read a book on this house called The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation's Largest Home by Denise Kiernan. It's a bit of a slog, but interesting.
The rest of the family couldn't understand why G. W. Vanderbilt II wanted to live so far way from his family in N.Y. & C.T. He was so far even from the nearest town, that a railway had to be built out to the site to bring in materials & workers.

[sunsetburgundy]

[silverstarry]

a summer "cottage" (The Breakers, a 70-room mansion with an area of 62,484 square feet in livable space)

*cries in poor*

When I hear the word "cottage," I think of a small granny flat or the little house in the woods where Sleeping Beauty lived with her fairy godmothers, not a 70 room mansion!

[akillarian]

Interesting, first time I hear the dwarves refer to as her godmothers 😁

[archersangel]

You might be confusing Snow White, who lived with the dwarfs, with Sleeping Beauty who lived with 3 fairy godmothers. In the Disney animated version anyway.

[sunsetburgundy]

[marvelhill]

I was at the Biltmore by myself taking photos of flowers in the garden and this older woman (60s-70s)walked by and asked if I wanted a photo of myself. She didn’t have a camera so it was clear she meant with the phone I was using to take pics.

I said “No, thank you”and she coldly and snootly went “You’ll regret it when you’re older” and walked away. It was really weird. I have photos of myself. I’m not going to regret not having a photo of me at the Biltmore…

I really enjoyed myself though and liked visiting the pond that was in Being There with Peter Sellers