Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from house
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm a Candas and Candis and
Speaker 1: I are going to be talking about one of our
Speaker 1: favorite historical homes today. Um. It reminded me a lot
Speaker 1: of the Hearst Castle episode recorded about a year ago.
Speaker 1: It's really fun to talk about these amazing palaces, I think,
Speaker 1: and even interesting homes that have intriguing stories behind them,
Speaker 1: like when we did in an old vintage podcast about
Speaker 1: the Winchester Mystery House. Sometimes it's the people behind the
Speaker 1: home that make for the great story. Yeah, and if
Speaker 1: you've been there and seeing some of the rooms they
Speaker 1: lived in, it really adds a lot to, I don't know,
Speaker 1: to your understanding of them. So the house will be
Speaker 1: talking about today is built More Estate, which is nestled
Speaker 1: in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina. And if you've
Speaker 1: never been, you really have to go to understand why
Speaker 1: it is so proudly and majestically referred to as America's
Speaker 1: largest home trademark trademark. That's um, yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: is amazing place. It's got four acres of floor space.
Speaker 1: It has two D and fifty rooms. That's thirty four bedrooms,
Speaker 1: forty three bathroom. Don't try to use any of those, No, No,
Speaker 1: And I think people try to get a peek at
Speaker 1: the bathrooms. You can't really see them, though. They have
Speaker 1: a mirror set up that you can get just the
Speaker 1: tiniest reflection of one. It also has sixty five fireplaces,
Speaker 1: and it was one of the first homes built that
Speaker 1: had electricity and underfloor heating, plus elevators. And the basement
Speaker 1: level is so fascinating. It's got an indoor bowling alley, pool, gymnasium,
Speaker 1: locker room, slash, changing areas and that's also where the
Speaker 1: kitchen and the servants quarters are too. Even changing areas
Speaker 1: that does not sound like it would be particularly interesting,
Speaker 1: but we're talking about twenty male changing rooms, twenty female
Speaker 1: changing room, the guests. Yeah, everything about this house is
Speaker 1: opulent in every way. So okay, But to understand the house,
Speaker 1: we have to understand the family that built it and
Speaker 1: understand their whole history, which is quite a long one.
Speaker 1: And this is of course the illustrious Vanderbilt family, which
Speaker 1: originally they came from Holland. There the Vanderbilts, Like, I
Speaker 1: just think that's a great They should have stuck with that,
Speaker 1: I think. I agree, vanderbuilt university. What if they more exciting,
Speaker 1: I think so. So they came to America from Holland
Speaker 1: in the late sixteen hundreds. But for a really long time,
Speaker 1: for many generations, they were just this successful, but modestly
Speaker 1: living farming family, you know, not not the ostentatious um
Speaker 1: family that they eventually became. It wasn't until Cornelius Vanderbilt,
Speaker 1: who's better known as Commodore Vanderbilt, that the family really
Speaker 1: rose to great heights. And he built his fortune in
Speaker 1: steamships and railroads and had thirteen children with his wife.
Speaker 1: So when he died in eighteen seventy seven, he had
Speaker 1: a fortune of one hundred million dollars, which I mean
Speaker 1: that's for the time, quite considerable today. Um. And so
Speaker 1: when he died, he left the majority of that fortune
Speaker 1: to his eldest son, William Henry. He kind of considered
Speaker 1: some of his younger son's waste rolls, and he thought
Speaker 1: that William Henry would be the only one who could
Speaker 1: carry on the family business, and he did very successfully.
Speaker 1: He continued to build upon the family fortune. And while
Speaker 1: William Henry was active on the business scene, his wife
Speaker 1: was working the social angle because the Vanderbilts were still
Speaker 1: considered new money, so she was helping to build the
Speaker 1: family prestige. Yeah, a lot of the old money in
Speaker 1: New York society was continuing to snub the Vanderbilts. If
Speaker 1: you've ever read The Age of Innocence, you have pretty
Speaker 1: good sense of of how this would go down. So
Speaker 1: the Vanderbilts commissioned this amazing mansion on Fifth Avenue. It's
Speaker 1: going to have fifty nine rooms, was built in eighty one,
Speaker 1: and it could hold their huge art collection. And during
Speaker 1: this time, Vanderbilt children, all sorts of cousins are building
Speaker 1: these amazing mansions in Rhode Island in New York. It's really, uh,
Speaker 1: it's building time for this family to vanderbilding time. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think so. They're definitely cementing their place in society. Um.
Speaker 1: At the time, this Fifth Avenue house seems pretty grotesque
Speaker 1: to some people. Louis H. Sullivan called it a contradiction,
Speaker 1: an absurdity, a characteristically New York absurdity. But it set
Speaker 1: a certain style and it caught on with the rest
Speaker 1: of society. Suddenly the Vanderbilts were in now and during
Speaker 1: this time, during the construction of this mansion, we have
Speaker 1: George Washington Vanderbilt growing up. He was the youngest child
Speaker 1: of eight William Henry's children, and he was born in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two, and he was the only kid who
Speaker 1: was still living at home when the Fifth Avenue Palace
Speaker 1: was completed. So I mean he grew up with construction.
Speaker 1: He grew up with palaces and opulence. I think it
Speaker 1: definitely affected his later life, as we will see. And
Speaker 1: even though young George was doted upon by his parents,
Speaker 1: he was definitely a family favorite. He was very much
Speaker 1: unlike his brothers, who were more invested in the family business.
Speaker 1: George was interested in books. He started collecting them when
Speaker 1: he was a boy, and when he was twelve years old,
Speaker 1: actually he started noting all the titles of the books
Speaker 1: that he had read. And when he died, he had
Speaker 1: noted more than three thousand, one fifty nine centuries of books.
Speaker 1: And Sarah did the math, and that averages out to
Speaker 1: eighty one books a year. He died at only fifty one,
Speaker 1: so I mean, I can't even imagine how many books
Speaker 1: he would have read if he had lived another twenty
Speaker 1: thirty years. And you may be thinking that an awful
Speaker 1: lot of time for reading. But he was the original
Speaker 1: man of leisure. He had nothing to do but invest
Speaker 1: himself in his studies. He learned all kinds of foreign languages, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin,
Speaker 1: Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Hebrew sanscrit and even later some
Speaker 1: different Native American languages. Yeah, and he studied art. He
Speaker 1: read a lot of philosophy. He was very interested in traveling.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, all the Vanderbilts are visiting Europe,
Speaker 1: but he would tour Asia and Africa as well. And
Speaker 1: he used these travels to of course collect art and
Speaker 1: interesting pieces for his Fifth Avenue home, but also a
Speaker 1: lot of books. He ends up with a library of
Speaker 1: twenty three thousand volumes. So I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: very learned man. He's not formally educated, but he was
Speaker 1: privately tutored and obviously spends all of his free time reading.
Speaker 1: He's he's intelligent, and he knows that he's going to
Speaker 1: be taken care of for the rest of his life,
Speaker 1: even though he does have a considerably smaller share in
Speaker 1: the family fortune than his elder brothers. But he's gonna
Speaker 1: be all right. He's set, and when he comes of
Speaker 1: a certain age, he realizes that he needs his own
Speaker 1: mansion to call his own. When he's traveling to North Carolina,
Speaker 1: he saw Asheville and had a winter resort reputation, so
Speaker 1: he went there to scope it out, and he realizes
Speaker 1: that this is where he wants to build his mansion,
Speaker 1: and it seems like a bit of an odd choice,
Speaker 1: the mountains of North Carolina, when most of his family
Speaker 1: is situated in cities further north. The Rhode Island is
Speaker 1: their country spot sort of. But he realizes that he
Speaker 1: can buy tons of land and build an empire for himself,
Speaker 1: so in eight and eighties he starts his buying spree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a strange little fact, and I couldn't find
Speaker 1: it online, but I remember it from some of the
Speaker 1: literature at the house itself. But a currently, once local
Speaker 1: landowners got wind of a Vanderbilt coming around buying up land,
Speaker 1: they started holding out for a little bit more so
Speaker 1: they'd have sort of a broken down barn or farm
Speaker 1: house and a few acres surrounding it, and they would
Speaker 1: hold out Vanderbilt came along and paid a pretty penny
Speaker 1: for it because very smart. He didn't want this old
Speaker 1: farm in the middle of the now. But by eight
Speaker 1: eighty nine he was ready to start construction on the house.
Speaker 1: And he didn't just hire any old architect to do it.
Speaker 1: He hired Richard Morris Hunt, who by this point had
Speaker 1: a famous reputation for building these mansions for these elite
Speaker 1: New York families. He had also built the New York
Speaker 1: Tribeane Building, which at one point was the tallest building
Speaker 1: in the world. So, yeah, this is a top notch
Speaker 1: architect to hire for your estate. After six years of construction,
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt decides that the home is ready to be opened officially,
Speaker 1: officially open in its current condition, but it's never really
Speaker 1: finished and we're going to talk more about that a
Speaker 1: little bit later. But you couldn't see that money eventually
Speaker 1: just ran out. There are rooms that are undone, there
Speaker 1: were rooms that were conceptualized but never completed. Uh. One
Speaker 1: of the biggest features of the house, the Grand Oregon,
Speaker 1: is actually artificial facause fake pipes. He didn't have the
Speaker 1: money to buy real pipes, and um, you can still
Speaker 1: see an unfinished room at the house today. To give
Speaker 1: you an idea of what the house would have been like.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of like one of those beautiful
Speaker 1: Faberge eggs. It's gorgeous and ornate on the outside, but
Speaker 1: maybe on the inside. You open it and it's hollow spots,
Speaker 1: hollow spots, right yeah, but I mean in people didn't
Speaker 1: know that yet. It seemed likely to be completed, and
Speaker 1: it was amazing and opulent. And he named it built
Speaker 1: More from Built, which was the ancestral home of the
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt and more comes from the word like for rolling uplands,
Speaker 1: so it's a nice estate name. He's got all this land,
Speaker 1: and because it's so remote at the time, the construction
Speaker 1: of it is pretty unbelievable. I mean, they have to
Speaker 1: build a three mile railroad spur just to get all
Speaker 1: of the supplies. They're all that Indiana limestone. They have
Speaker 1: to build a brick works on site. Um. So it's
Speaker 1: its own little city, and actually there is a city
Speaker 1: attached to it, right. He always envisioned the chateau is
Speaker 1: an operating, working estate, and the dairy on the Biltmore
Speaker 1: grounds became largely successful, and that was what was the
Speaker 1: now unintended cash cow for several years for the family. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so should we talk about the estate a little bit.
Speaker 1: I mean, to get a real picture of it, you
Speaker 1: you do need to go there, or at least go online.
Speaker 1: There's a virtual tour you can sort of walk through
Speaker 1: these rooms. But I mean, what's your favorite part of it, Candice,
Speaker 1: I would have to say the basement level. It's so
Speaker 1: fascinating to me, and that didn't open until the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: But down there you can see the kitchen and the pantry,
Speaker 1: and that's always so fascinating to me. I like seeing
Speaker 1: how people cooked in the olden days. And the swimming
Speaker 1: The swimming pool is really fascinating to see. There's no
Speaker 1: water in it, so you can see all of the
Speaker 1: in late tile and the dramatic slope from the shallow
Speaker 1: wind to the deep end and down there also is
Speaker 1: the Halloween room, which I always thought was so cute
Speaker 1: because Cornelia and her friends had transformed it when Halloween
Speaker 1: evening with these whimsical drawings on the walls. And I
Speaker 1: thought that was adorable, thinking that they were very young children,
Speaker 1: and come to find out, I think they went there
Speaker 1: at late twenties or so when she did this, so
Speaker 1: probably a champagne fueled party. How nice to be the
Speaker 1: only child of George Vanderbilt. Yeah, I really like the
Speaker 1: tapestry room upstairs has hung with all of these beautiful
Speaker 1: Flemish tapestries, and I think at Christmas they actually set
Speaker 1: out Christmas trees just every turn of every tapistry. Unbelievable
Speaker 1: Christmas at Biltmore's. You just have to experience it. But
Speaker 1: as impressive as the house is, I think the most
Speaker 1: amazing thing about visiting is when you look outside and
Speaker 1: you can't see anything but mountains, amazingly manicured grounds surrounding
Speaker 1: you forest. I mean, you can't even see like a
Speaker 1: watch tower, a fire watch tower off in the distance
Speaker 1: or something. You feel like you're in a completely different time.
Speaker 1: And that was a very important aspect of this manner
Speaker 1: of state for Vanderbilt. He wanted it to be his
Speaker 1: own private kingdom, almost and so he hired the number
Speaker 1: one landscape designer in the country at the time, Frederick
Speaker 1: law Olmstead, to make sure that he got the effect
Speaker 1: he wanted. And if you've heard that name, it's because
Speaker 1: alms Dead had to huge reputation at the time. He
Speaker 1: had designed Central Park, he had worked on Prospect Park,
Speaker 1: Faremont Park, belle Isle Park, and even the Capital Grounds
Speaker 1: in d C. And he also contributed to turning Yosemite
Speaker 1: into a public park. Yeah, and he was an old
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt friend too, so it's not too surprising that he
Speaker 1: got called to this job. They were neighbors from Staten Island. Um,
Speaker 1: so he's brought in pretty early before the construction even
Speaker 1: starts in to consult and decide the master plan for
Speaker 1: this estate. And he tells George that he thinks the
Speaker 1: house should have nice formal gardens surrounding it that fit
Speaker 1: with the style farms in the bottom lands by the river,
Speaker 1: so it could, you know, really function as a self
Speaker 1: sustaining its day exactly. And then forest, and they're nearly
Speaker 1: one twenty five thousand acres of forest at at this
Speaker 1: point at least, and a lot of it was cut over,
Speaker 1: so it's not pristine and beautiful. It's been chopped for farmland,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the farmland was pretty worn out
Speaker 1: by this point. And because Vanderbult was so interested in
Speaker 1: preserving and conserving the land, he worked to renovate this
Speaker 1: forest essentially. So Olmstead started the process by bringing in
Speaker 1: for men who could call the existing forest, and this
Speaker 1: essentially meant cutting down the trees that were unhealthy and
Speaker 1: clearing space to replant new trees. And among the projects
Speaker 1: in the forest, he also added three hundred acres of
Speaker 1: white pine. Yeah, and he covered the whole project too,
Speaker 1: because he knew that this was pretty significant research in
Speaker 1: forestry and it might set a new standard, and Vanderbolt
Speaker 1: was actually hoping to do just that. So Olmstead brought
Speaker 1: on Gifford peen Show, who only left built more to
Speaker 1: go on to head up the U. S. Forest Service.
Speaker 1: So that gives you a pretty good idea of how
Speaker 1: significant this project was. Um And in nineteen fourteen some
Speaker 1: of the estate land was sold to make a national forest,
Speaker 1: which is why you have those vistas today. It's still preserved.
Speaker 1: In addition to the significant forest on built Mars estate,
Speaker 1: there was also a model farm that was a working
Speaker 1: farm and some of the hands who lived there would
Speaker 1: raise Jersey cows and pedigree hogs, and Sarah had pointed
Speaker 1: out that In Vanderbilt's New York Times obituary, the writer
Speaker 1: noted that some of his prize hogs would sell for
Speaker 1: five hundred to eight hundred dollars and that's in ninety
Speaker 1: so I'm serious. But of course it's not all this
Speaker 1: farmland and forested land. There are these very formal planned
Speaker 1: gardens around the home and that's what Olmstead really worked
Speaker 1: carefully on along with Richard Morris Hunt, and they step
Speaker 1: to that French Renaissance theme of the home, which has
Speaker 1: these exterior staircases and the limestone and the turrets and
Speaker 1: it's it's very ornate and the gardens match that. And
Speaker 1: we're not going to go over every garden again. You
Speaker 1: can look at pictures and take your own tour, but
Speaker 1: the approaches is kind of a significant part of it.
Speaker 1: It's three miles long, and as soon as you pull
Speaker 1: off the road you have just left everything else behind.
Speaker 1: That's where your vision suddenly. You can't see the outside
Speaker 1: buildings and everything like that. You're just on this little
Speaker 1: road going through the forest. And I think it's interesting.
Speaker 1: But Olmstead was almost trying to create a sub tropical
Speaker 1: forest when he laid this out. He put in a
Speaker 1: lot of bamboo just to make these northern visitors, you know,
Speaker 1: these family members from New York and friends feel warm
Speaker 1: and cozy here in Asheville which is not a not
Speaker 1: a central it's cold, it's up in mountains, but he
Speaker 1: figured out which plants could survive up there and live
Speaker 1: through the winter and put them in In addition to
Speaker 1: the approach. Some other significant gardens that you should note
Speaker 1: if and when you visit built more include the Italian Garden,
Speaker 1: which features symmetrical pools and lawns and statues. And Olmsted
Speaker 1: thought that this would be a place where the family
Speaker 1: would gather outdoors to play tennis and to converse, maybe
Speaker 1: to take their cocktails. Another garden was the shrub Garden,
Speaker 1: which is not too exciting to me. It's it's shrubs,
Speaker 1: but five different species of them. Then the walled Garden,
Speaker 1: which is where you can see a split between the
Speaker 1: ideas of Vanderbilt and Olmsted almost thought an edible garden
Speaker 1: would be old fashioned country ornamental garden, almost right. The
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt wanted it to be more ornate and showy, so
Speaker 1: it has plenty of flowers in there too. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then there's the Conservatory um, which of course is the
Speaker 1: nurse for all of the grounds, and it's a pretty
Speaker 1: interesting looking building itself too. Um. But you know, you
Speaker 1: could you could spend ages, I think, just wandering around
Speaker 1: looking at all these different gardens, even after you've left
Speaker 1: the house. Despite the picturesque location and the attention and
Speaker 1: time that had been devoted to constructing a beautiful chateau.
Speaker 1: Uh As we had mentioned earlier, a lot of bill
Speaker 1: warm was left unfinished. And perhaps I was too harsh
Speaker 1: a critic earlier because I live in a two bedroom
Speaker 1: condo and one bedroom is fully functioning and the other
Speaker 1: one has a bunch of stuff in it and it
Speaker 1: is not on display for guests. So I can completely
Speaker 1: empathize with George Vanderbilt. He started this very ambitious two
Speaker 1: fifty room project. It's understandable that some rooms would not
Speaker 1: be open to the public. However, when you leave places unfinished,
Speaker 1: and you leave equipment around, and there's debris and and
Speaker 1: workers coming in and out of your home, it's bound
Speaker 1: to fall into disrepair. And that is exactly what happened
Speaker 1: to build. More So, as Sarah mentioned, he abruptly stopped
Speaker 1: work on the house. He'd been investing about two fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars per year on maintenance and construction, and he
Speaker 1: reduced his budget to seventy thousand dollars so that's a
Speaker 1: significant cut. He came up with a few cost cutting solutions.
Speaker 1: One was leasing out the land for hunting. Another was
Speaker 1: selling off important pieces of art, putting in fake pipes,
Speaker 1: putting in fake pipes. But unfortunately he couldn't figure out
Speaker 1: a good budgetary plan before he died. So Edith, his widow,
Speaker 1: was left to oversee the completion of the estate, and
Speaker 1: one of her solutions, as Sarah said to, was to
Speaker 1: sell off the forest land which contributed to Pisca National Forest.
Speaker 1: But she was adamant about keeping fourteen thousand acres around
Speaker 1: the home, and this was to ensure the family's privacy.
Speaker 1: The Vantibiles were pretty serious about their privacy too, and
Speaker 1: there started to be rumors that Edith would eventually sell
Speaker 1: the house and turn it into some sort of hotel
Speaker 1: and there you could stay in the built more where
Speaker 1: the Vanderbilt slept. But Edith really loved the house, and
Speaker 1: even though she had plenty of other homes around the country,
Speaker 1: this one had a special place in her heart. After all,
Speaker 1: it's the house her husband had so fully devoted himself to.
Speaker 1: That's where she gave birth to her only child. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she'd come back of her Christmas to give gifts to
Speaker 1: the Built More employees. It was important to her and
Speaker 1: she was starting to get sort of more of a
Speaker 1: public role herself. She was uh launching a career in
Speaker 1: North Carolina politics and society. And her daughter came of
Speaker 1: age and married an Englishman, John Francis, Amherst Cecil in
Speaker 1: n The wedding was that Built More. So that's another
Speaker 1: important life event for this family that took place there.
Speaker 1: But she really didn't want to have to sell it
Speaker 1: off or turn it into a hotel or something like that.
Speaker 1: She was looking for an alternative, definitely. The Vanderbilts never
Speaker 1: gave up on Builtmore, and the Cecil's actually began living
Speaker 1: at Builtmore and they took an apartment in a wing
Speaker 1: on the north end of the home, but the majority
Speaker 1: of the home stayed dark and it was still in
Speaker 1: disrepair at this point because it was simply too big
Speaker 1: to be maintained at their budget. And I was chatting
Speaker 1: with Sarah earlier about this, and that just sounds like
Speaker 1: terrible conditions for newly weds to be in a tiny
Speaker 1: apartment can find in a very dark home, just kind
Speaker 1: of scary, not really romantic. But John Cecil actually became
Speaker 1: very attached to build more, and I think it spoke
Speaker 1: to his English gentleman's sensibilities. He liked being in the country,
Speaker 1: he liked hunting, he liked exploring the grounds, whereas Cornelia,
Speaker 1: like her mother Edith, preferred life in the city. This
Speaker 1: was really significant, Asheville had been pleasing with the Vanderbilts
Speaker 1: to open up built more for tourism to help offsette
Speaker 1: some of the trouble that the country had been having
Speaker 1: from the Great Depression. They thought that if Asheville could
Speaker 1: have a spot for tourists to flock to, it really
Speaker 1: helped the city, so they agreed to do so. Just
Speaker 1: five per cent of the house was available for public viewing.
Speaker 1: Tickets were two dollars, and that guaranteed that you could
Speaker 1: see some highlights in the home like Napoleon's chest set
Speaker 1: and Cardinal Richelieu's flemished tapestries, which the massive library and
Speaker 1: great works of art by the likes of John Singer Sergeant,
Speaker 1: But it didn't have that sort of warmth and electricity
Speaker 1: that the home had when George and Edith were installed there.
Speaker 1: Cornelia just didn't have that sense to her. She was
Speaker 1: not a natural hostess. Uh, But we think that maybe
Speaker 1: her guarded nous was what created the mystery around the
Speaker 1: home and made it even more attractive to the tourists
Speaker 1: who wanted to see it, because before the Secil's publicly
Speaker 1: opened it, it had been totally off limits. On Wednesday
Speaker 1: and Saturday afternoons, you could drive the grounds and if
Speaker 1: the family was not at home, you could approach the facade,
Speaker 1: but if they were anywhere on property, you would just
Speaker 1: stay completely away. Yeah, I mean, even the Queen offers
Speaker 1: a better deal than that or some of her home.
Speaker 1: So then something pretty major happened in this whole house history.
Speaker 1: The Cecil's divorced and John stayed at the bill More
Speaker 1: because it, just as we mentioned earlier, it appealed to
Speaker 1: him as an Englishman, and Cornelia was happier in the city,
Speaker 1: so that's where she went. But John's propriety, this englishness
Speaker 1: about him, had a very influential effect on the whole
Speaker 1: tone of the house. He sort of set the propriety right,
Speaker 1: and he would have grown up in a country where
Speaker 1: people toward his storic homes and just let themselves in
Speaker 1: and took them. Rambled about tours and rambled about that's
Speaker 1: how things were done in England and even in some
Speaker 1: other European countries, and so that's how he thought that
Speaker 1: things should be done at built More, and that was
Speaker 1: a mentality that was passed down to his son William.
Speaker 1: So the house continues to be in pretty dismal state.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but Cornelia is taking pieces of
Speaker 1: furniture and art to furnish her apartments elsewhere in the country.
Speaker 1: Uh So John's doing what he can to make it
Speaker 1: look presentable, which means polishing wood, oiling, leather, replacing curtains.
Speaker 1: But there's just no money. And so of their two children,
Speaker 1: George and William, George is given a hand in the dairy,
Speaker 1: the built More dairy, which, as we mentioned, with those
Speaker 1: really high press hogs, is pretty profitable at the time.
Speaker 1: But William is strangely fascinated by the house, and he
Speaker 1: is a determined young man and he really thinks that
Speaker 1: he can make a profit from built More. No one
Speaker 1: believes that he can do so, and William cecil even
Speaker 1: once said I was made painfully aware that the future
Speaker 1: was drab, and while I might be a fifty percent
Speaker 1: stockholder of the company, the only thing of value other
Speaker 1: than the contents of the house with the dairy. So
Speaker 1: thus begins the age of William Cecil trying to make
Speaker 1: this house that he was going to inherit into a
Speaker 1: profitable business, something he wouldn't just lose or have to
Speaker 1: sell off. And he did it by new built more
Speaker 1: tourism and employment contributed three hundred and fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: to the local economy of Asheville. Um. So it worked.
Speaker 1: It worked. It took a long time and a lot
Speaker 1: of experimentation and a lot of different efforts, some of
Speaker 1: which worked and which failed miserably. But before I go
Speaker 1: further into this, I just want to stop and recommend
Speaker 1: a book called Lady on the Hill by Howard E. Covington, Jr.
Speaker 1: Which is where I did most of my research for
Speaker 1: what I'm about to tell you. It's a fabulous book.
Speaker 1: William Amhurst Vanderbilt Cecil is an interesting character. He's he's
Speaker 1: lovable as that stadio British type who wants everything done
Speaker 1: his way. But that's okay because his way is really
Speaker 1: successful and his ideas are really good. And he had
Speaker 1: a couple of ideas about your responsibility when you live
Speaker 1: on a big estate, you have to preserve it, you
Speaker 1: have to improve it, and you have to leave it
Speaker 1: in improved condition than what it was when it was
Speaker 1: handed to you. And he's also famous for saying, I
Speaker 1: don't preserve built more to make a profit. I make
Speaker 1: a profit to preserve built More. That saying is plastered
Speaker 1: around Built everywhere, everywhere. So here's the history as to
Speaker 1: how he made built more profitable. In the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: this is when tourists in America are taking to the
Speaker 1: highways in their cars, and Built Moore was in a
Speaker 1: competitive region in North Carolina. Cherokee had just been established
Speaker 1: and you may be familiar with the famous outdoor drama
Speaker 1: under these Hills that launched around that era there. And
Speaker 1: then nearby Grandfather Mountain had just built a swinging bridge,
Speaker 1: so people were going to the Indian Reservation and then
Speaker 1: they were going to see the mountains that not all
Speaker 1: of them made it to this historic home, but those
Speaker 1: who did in this time could literally park their cars
Speaker 1: right outside built marsh front door. And there are pictures
Speaker 1: of this. And it's so strange because today if you
Speaker 1: visited or you play a visit, you know that you
Speaker 1: have to park way far away and you're shuttled in
Speaker 1: by bus to the front door. You just hike through
Speaker 1: this little path in the woods. Yes, it's uh, I
Speaker 1: mean again partly maintaining that majesty of the approach. I
Speaker 1: think keeping the station wagons out of the front lawn
Speaker 1: doesn't look as nice. And what else are how Bolster
Speaker 1: built Moore's reputation during this time is that it became
Speaker 1: a focal point of a major Hollywood movie that Sarah
Speaker 1: talked about in an earlier podcast. Yeah, the Swan with
Speaker 1: Grace Kelly and Alec Guinness, which was filmed in nineteen
Speaker 1: and it played an important role in our Princess Grace
Speaker 1: marriage wedding episode. Um, but that helped so much and tourism.
Speaker 1: Tourism shot up third percent after people went out and
Speaker 1: saw this movie and saw this beautiful facade in these
Speaker 1: lovely grounds. And that's what bothered William Cecil is that
Speaker 1: the Hollywood sparkle wasn't the reality. The house was still
Speaker 1: in shambles except for what the tourists could see. It
Speaker 1: was structurally sound, but the carpets for threadbare, the flags
Speaker 1: in the banquet hall were falling apart, and no money
Speaker 1: had really been invested in it since nineteen fifteen, So
Speaker 1: Cecil was determined to make it profitable, to get something
Speaker 1: out of it, And he was somewhat of an outsider
Speaker 1: among a lot of the staff, which their local people
Speaker 1: who have lived there most of their lives. He has
Speaker 1: this English accent. He was educated as at Harvard, as
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, Um, and he calls himself quote a
Speaker 1: New York banker corrupted by Washington. So he's gonna he's
Speaker 1: gonna stand and stand out. And not only was he
Speaker 1: an outsider at Builtmore, but he was also an outsider
Speaker 1: in the realm of historic sites because he didn't approve
Speaker 1: of period costumes and petting zoos like the kind you
Speaker 1: would find in colonial Williamsburg. And Builtmore wasn't considered to
Speaker 1: have the same historic and educational clout as a city
Speaker 1: like Charleston. It was entirely in its own category. And
Speaker 1: not to mention, after all those years, it was still
Speaker 1: privately owned. Yeah, So when Interstate forty came through in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, more people were coming to Asheville than ever,
Speaker 1: and Cecil wanted to make sure that they definitely came
Speaker 1: by Built More. His first few years in the house,
Speaker 1: Built More only had three thousand visitors annually, and most
Speaker 1: of those visitors came during the summer months when they
Speaker 1: could tour the beautiful grounds and have picnics and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. In the winter, a lot of times
Speaker 1: nobody would come at all, which is so strange when
Speaker 1: you think of Asheville's history as a winter tourist spot,
Speaker 1: it seems like that would be the number one season
Speaker 1: for them. But then consider stepping into a giant drafty
Speaker 1: helm and you get an idea as to why it
Speaker 1: wasn't a exactly a welcoming site. So he had a
Speaker 1: couple of strategies. One, he had to make cosmetic updates
Speaker 1: to the home too. He had to change the way
Speaker 1: the visitors would treated. He wanted them to be treated
Speaker 1: like guests like his grandfather, George Vanderbilt might have treated them,
Speaker 1: instead of them being pain tourists. And this is when
Speaker 1: we see his old world model of country homes installed
Speaker 1: a built more let people stroll and explore on their own.
Speaker 1: He's not gonna put up do not touch signs. He's
Speaker 1: just gonna block off areas very subtly with a velvet rope.
Speaker 1: That's how his grandfather would have wanted it, and when
Speaker 1: they were coming to build more in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: they were still following this nineteen thirties era tour that
Speaker 1: had been set up when Cornelia and John Cecaul first
Speaker 1: opened the home. So they just saw a couple of
Speaker 1: rooms downstairs and upstairs. And so he thought that he
Speaker 1: had to show more of the house in order to
Speaker 1: give people a reason to come back to build more,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people would come once, say they've
Speaker 1: seen it, and then never return, and that was bad business.
Speaker 1: So he didn't encourage guided tours though this wasn't This
Speaker 1: wasn't like touring some bunker or civil war site where
Speaker 1: you have your reenactor who tells you everything you need
Speaker 1: to know. But there were still people on site to
Speaker 1: answer questions, you know, friendly docents around every corner. And
Speaker 1: he also put a stop to a lot of the
Speaker 1: old house myths that had been going along, like Vanderbilt
Speaker 1: supposedly had Julius Caesar's bathtub installed, not true. He wanted
Speaker 1: the house to to stand on its own merits, not
Speaker 1: be some lie. Essentially, another thing he did that really
Speaker 1: increased tourism was to reconsider advertising prior to see still
Speaker 1: taking over management. At built Moore, the advertising budget was
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars per year. By the nine sixties he'd
Speaker 1: increase that to nine thousand dollars. He ran a gardening
Speaker 1: column in the local paper written by Builtmore gardeners from
Speaker 1: their point of view. He created this fant has to
Speaker 1: add campaign about Alice who was a curious visitor, and
Speaker 1: the Mountain Queen, and these became very popular ads. And
Speaker 1: he also planned event to draw people year round. Uh
Speaker 1: In the warmer months he had the Zelia Festival to
Speaker 1: combat the drop in tourism, and the in the cold
Speaker 1: winter months, he had Christmas at built More. By attendance
Speaker 1: was at thousand, and previously it had hovered around thirty
Speaker 1: five thousand. Yeah, and with the oil crisis in the seventies,
Speaker 1: he took it up another notche even to really bring
Speaker 1: in visitors. He finished the music room and the salon
Speaker 1: on the ground floor, and he hired North Carolina builders
Speaker 1: to do all the work so it was authentic and
Speaker 1: helping the local economy. And his rebuilding projects kind of
Speaker 1: threw off preservationists, though it didn't always seem to fit
Speaker 1: the model they were used to write. Preservationists by definition
Speaker 1: like to preserve spaces and history as they were. But
Speaker 1: his philosophy always was this is how George Vanderbilt would
Speaker 1: have wanted it. He would have wanted a clean and
Speaker 1: opulent space to show his visitors, not faded tapestries and
Speaker 1: something that looks like it's been sitting for decades. Now
Speaker 1: certainly not so. After about twenty years managing the home,
Speaker 1: he's able to make a substantial profit. Now it's about
Speaker 1: three point five million dollars, and that's not just from
Speaker 1: ticket sales. He realized that food is a valuable asset.
Speaker 1: He realized that he could make a significant amount of
Speaker 1: money from selling food and selling souvenirs and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. All this all the stuff that tourists like.
Speaker 1: And in fact, he once even said that um tourists
Speaker 1: every twenty minutes stopped to eat something, buy something, or
Speaker 1: use the bathroom. I think that plays into your stodgy
Speaker 1: English from the descriptions. And to that end, he served
Speaker 1: the tourist's best interests. He built more public restroom, he
Speaker 1: installed air conditioning in the home, built more restaurant, sold
Speaker 1: him ice cream. Uh. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: he did that wasn't too popular at first was he
Speaker 1: opened a winery at Builtmore. This was his concept of
Speaker 1: built More by the bottle, and he didn't even have
Speaker 1: a license to sell alcohol when he first started experimenting,
Speaker 1: so it was a doomed project from the start that
Speaker 1: took a long time to get off the ground. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't just jump into the wine business
Speaker 1: and expect a lot of success. But eventually he realized,
Speaker 1: and eventually the winery turned a profit too. Yeah. He
Speaker 1: hired Frenchman Philippe Jordan to come in and oversee the
Speaker 1: project from scratch, and that was in And here's something
Speaker 1: to give you an idea of just how far Built
Speaker 1: Moore had come at this point. In three he made
Speaker 1: the executive decision to construct a winery on the site
Speaker 1: where the dairy barn had once stood, which was the
Speaker 1: old moneymaker exactly. Uh. So he builds his winery and
Speaker 1: it turns its first profit around two thousand four, So
Speaker 1: good job, Cecil. I would venture to say that the
Speaker 1: winery with Cecil's last big project, Built Moore had its
Speaker 1: centennial celebration, and at the end of the celebration he
Speaker 1: handed over the reins to his son Bill. But he
Speaker 1: couldn't actually hand over the house. He couldn't actually hand
Speaker 1: over the house. You're right about that. This is a
Speaker 1: sticky part of Biltmore's history. Uh, he owns the home
Speaker 1: and he's been petitioning the government for several years for
Speaker 1: a little bit of help with that sticky inheritance tax
Speaker 1: issue because it's going to be a huge burden on
Speaker 1: his children when one day they inherit the home. So
Speaker 1: we don't know what will happen if the built More
Speaker 1: will become a federal state historical site or kids will
Speaker 1: try to keep it in the family. And to that end,
Speaker 1: the family has been really proactive about branding the home.
Speaker 1: These days, you can buy built More wine, built More
Speaker 1: brand towels, cookbooks, food, wood, ornaments. Even outside the on
Speaker 1: site retail shops, you can get build More branded things.
Speaker 1: So there's a ton of money in this home and
Speaker 1: then the reputation that it has, and we can see
Speaker 1: in the years since Cecil has stepped down and let
Speaker 1: Bill manage the home, a couple of non Cecil things
Speaker 1: have been implemented, and there's a petting zoo, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of period costumes now and it's become more
Speaker 1: of a recreational destination. You can bicycle it Built More,
Speaker 1: you can go fishing. Uh, you can even take tours
Speaker 1: down the river on a little float. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's changed over the year. It's a different house than
Speaker 1: what George envisioned, yet remarkably similar. For sure, I would
Speaker 1: say more welcoming for the modern times. Definitely, it's nice
Speaker 1: to have the A C and heat. I agree. I agree.
Speaker 1: And if you've never visited Built More again, you should go. Well.
Speaker 1: I think that about wraps it up for our discussion
Speaker 1: on build More. But if you've ever visited and you
Speaker 1: have favorite rooms or stories to tell us about, please
Speaker 1: email us at history podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on Facebook or on Twitter
Speaker 1: at mist in history. And we have an article about
Speaker 1: some other pretty interesting historical homes. Ten most expensive Houses.
Speaker 1: I don't know what does it have built More on it.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I don't think built were me the list.
Speaker 1: It's again in its own category entyroom definitely, but still
Speaker 1: you should check it out. There's a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: and very expensive homes. You can find it by searching
Speaker 1: for ten most Expensive Homes on our home page at
Speaker 1: www dot house stuff works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is that how Stuff
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