Category Archives: Travels

I found myself in three different states today. I woke up in my home state of Georgia, traveled through South Carolina, and will lay my head in North Carolina tonight.
My wife and I are visiting Biltmore Estate this weekend, somewhat of a second anniversary present to ourselves. Two years has gone by quickly. It feels a little weird at times, considering I’m thirty years old and have friends that have been married the better part of ten years and have children that are already in school.
Anyway, on to the point of this blog.
The house is simply amazing. The architecture of the building simply took my breath away. I spent quite a lot of time outside at the little cafe estimating what it would cost to recreate this house and the figure simply blew my mind. In my daily life, I deal in a product called Cast Stone, which is simply concrete tamped into a mold, the end product made to mimic limestone. Considering much of the house is hand carved solid blocks of limestone, the figure began to multiply rather quickly.
I ended up over the $100,000,000 mark. This includes molds, custom carving of the finished product which in itself would be extremely difficult to do because of varying densities throughout the thickness of the stone, personnel needed to build the molds, materials for the molds, personnel needed to tamp the stones and remove them from the molds, so on and so forth. This also includes building a plant on site, building housing for all said employees, having all materials shipped to the job site…I’m sure I left something out. I’d have to do it just like they did in the old days.
I spent a few minutes at the carriage house where we were eating estimating the three walls that make up the area we were in. The wall cladding required to cover those three walls alone would cost the customer over $11,000, not including the window sills and surrounds that were on the one wall. That cost is only for the wall cladding itself, which the masons would cut as required to fit in the field.
Oh yeah, I left out the cost of the fifty or so masons the job would require.
I also spent a lot of the tour daydreaming. I found myself wondering what life would be like in that old house. I wondered what it would be like to live in such opulence. What it would be like to have so much money I could go and do whatever I wanted to do. I think I would do the exact same thing that George W. Vanderbilt III did. I’d buy so much land it would be easiest to measure it in square miles, so big it would take me two or three days by horseback just to reach the other side. I’d build a house so big I’d never be able to finish exploring it after construction was complete. I’d build a garden so big I could walk around it from sunrise to sunset and not see everything. I’d also have my own bass pond, just like George did and I’d have a river running through it with nice, cold water so I could go trout fishing whenever I felt like it.
I’d have a gun room and a bowling alley, just like Biltmore. In fact, if Biltmore were mine, I’d add just a few things. I’d add another “carriage house” for my collection of automobiles. After all, cars were once called carriages. I’d also add an air strip and a heli pad. One of the many, many rooms would become my clock room. It would be a room straight out of Hook. Rent the movie if you don’t know what I’m talking about. I’d also convert the carriage house back into an actual carriage house for my collection on Clydesdales. I’ve always had an affection towards Clydesdale horses.
Of course, I’d have to have secret passages. What good is a house that big without secret passages?
As we stood on the big grassy area to the left of the house, I leaned over the edge of the wall and looked down. It’s a good fifty foot or more drop straight down to the ground below. My imagination took over again at this point and I envisioned an army on horseback coming up the mountain with myself and my own army on top of that very wall showering arrows and bullets from our Winchester lever action rifles down on them.
What I didn’t know about the place though was that it was originally 125,000 or so acres big until after George died. His wife sold some 85,000 acres to the U.S. Government for the creation of the Pisgah National Forest. I also learned that George III was pretty much the father of the forestry system we use today. In that, I share his dream. I want at some point in my life to purchase a piece of land large enough to create a nature preserve. That’s what I want my legacy to be.
Biltmore is a wondrous place and I have every intention of coming back one day. I really would like to see it in the fall. Winter would be nice too.