The Last Castle

 

I really enjoyed reading The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation's Largest Home by Denise Kiernan. I am sure the fact that I started reading this days before heading to Asheville, North Carolina and my first visit to the Biltmore Estate and I finished reading the morning after arriving back home was a huge contributing factor. I would highly recommend that everyone visiting Biltmore takes the time to read this non-fiction accounting of George W. Vanderbilt's visions of his mountain home becoming a reality and then the fight by Edith Dresser Vanderbilt to keep her husband's dream alive after his death.I'm glad that I first read The Wedding Veil by Kristy Woodson Harvey, the fictionalized version of basically the same story. (It also became incredibly obvious that Harvey did her research well. Reading both these books in conjunction with my trip gave me enough information so that I had a good background about the city of Asheville, the history of the area, the Vanderbilt connection to the area, and some specific history of Biltmore.It also insured that I was more curious about things that I saw while sightseeing. And that sightseeing included a trolley around Asheville, time spent at the Grove Park Inn, spending time at the Estate and driving around the Piegan Forest. Now that I finished The Last Castle, I wish I was close enough to go back to the Asheville and look at some specific things a little more closely.

Sadly, it was too cold on the day of our visit to explore the gardens the way that I'd hoped. I'd done research on how to best maximize your time at the estate so we got their mid-morning, giving us time to shuttle to the house, then get to the gardens (I thought that would be a walk and not a shuttle), explore, and time to get back to the house to enjoy a hot chocolate before getting to go inside for our audio tour appointed time. We took the audio tour slowly, savoring lots of the rooms. From there, we shuttled back to the parking area and then drove to the Antler Hill Winery, a new business started by. the latest generation of the family. After the wine tasting, we went to the Legacy exhibit which I really enjoyed. That brought even more of the book to life. It also got me thinking about the generation running the estate now. A brother and sister about my age running their family home as a business. George and Edith's great granddaughter lives on property so she's running her home as a business. Intriguing. 

Wealth is a strange thing. There's so much curiosity about how "the other half" lives as well as such disdain for those who have so much. At least this branch of the Vanderbilt family did a lot of good with their riches. And fascinating how they've struggled financially for many years trying to maintain the house the way George dreamed it could be.

Day 1 in Asheville we spent several hours at 
The Omni Grove Park Inn

The view from the Inn

Interesting construction






Day 2 was our Biltmore Day