Alexandria, Va., photographer Jeff Olson recently had the opportunity to visit one of the top tourist attractions in Ashville, N.C., the Biltmore Estate. Biltmore House, the main house on the estate, is a Chateauesque-styled mansion built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895. It is the largest privately owned house in the United States, at 178,926 square feet of floor space (135,280 square feet of living area). The grounds, which includes a densely filled lane with natural and uncultivated looking foliage and shrubbery to provide a relaxing journey for guests, was designed Frederick Law Olmsted, who is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture. (Olmsted was famous for co-designing many public parks, including New York City’s Central Park.) The grounds also include 75 acres of formal gardens — including an Italian formal garden, a walled garden, a shrub and rose garden — directly surrounding the house, fountains and a conservatory with individual rooms for palms and orchids. Biltmore Estate is still owned by one of Vanderbilt’s descendants.
Unheralded
