The Last Castle
The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation's Largest Home
Notes
"The Last Castle" is a detailed but perfectly readable account of the story of the Biltmore House and Estate in North Carolina - the largest private house ever built in the United States. George W. Vanderbilt, a bookish man given to wandering, spent much of his vast fortune buying land and building a fantastic house on a mountaintop. How he worked with such luminaries as Frederick Law Olsted and Richard Morris Hunt to shape the 175,000-square-foot house on an acreage three times larger than Washington D.C. is fascinating.
Equally fascinating is the story of his wife Edith, who dedicated much of her life to helping the people of the area raise their qualities of life, and also to encourage the regional arts and crafts into widely valued woodwork and textiles.
The story of the estate is deeply woven into the remarkable history of its time... from the Gilded Age through World War I, the Jazz Age, the Depression, World War II; through fire and devastating flood... Biltmore House with its estate, along with Biltmore Village, persevered through good times and hard times.
All told, this fascinating story touches significantly on everything from the Titanic to women's suffrage to the Lost Generation.
I wish I'd read this before we visited Asheville and the Biltmore in 2023. I'd have appreciated the whole trip more. As it is, we were just glad to have been able to see the whole area before the vicious damage done by Hurricane Helene in 2024.
Equally fascinating is the story of his wife Edith, who dedicated much of her life to helping the people of the area raise their qualities of life, and also to encourage the regional arts and crafts into widely valued woodwork and textiles.
The story of the estate is deeply woven into the remarkable history of its time... from the Gilded Age through World War I, the Jazz Age, the Depression, World War II; through fire and devastating flood... Biltmore House with its estate, along with Biltmore Village, persevered through good times and hard times.
All told, this fascinating story touches significantly on everything from the Titanic to women's suffrage to the Lost Generation.
I wish I'd read this before we visited Asheville and the Biltmore in 2023. I'd have appreciated the whole trip more. As it is, we were just glad to have been able to see the whole area before the vicious damage done by Hurricane Helene in 2024.