The Biltmore Estate is located in Asheville, North Carolina. It is the largest privately owned home in the United States. It was privately owned by George Washington Vanderbilt and his family. The house was designed by Richard Morris Hunt. Frederick Law Olmsted designed the landscape. The Biltmore Estate had a major role in the development of the creative architecture of the era and is well known for being America's largest home.
The Biltmore Estate was built from 1889 and 1895. It cost about $10,000,000 to build. The Biltmore Estate was built on 125,000 acres of land. It had a total of 250 rooms. Included in these rooms is a swimming pool and a bowling alley. In the Biltmore Estate, there are 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces. The house itself covers 4 acres land. The house possesses features such as electric lighting, telephones and an elevator.
The Vanderbilts were an extremely wealthy family of the time. George W. Vanderbilt grew up in one of the richest families in the United States. George Washington Vanderbilt was born in 1862. He was one of eight children. He attended the Columbia University at the age of sixteen. He originally purchased the land for his mother, who was often sick. He had never intended for the house to be open to the public.
Frederick Law Olmsted was the main architect of the Biltmore Estate. He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1822. He is also the designer of Stanford University, grounds of the U.S. capitol, Central Park, and Niagara Falls State Reserve. Olmsted did not attend college. In 1895 he suffered a mental breakdown and spent the rest of his life in an Asylum in Waverly Massachusetts. Olmsted died in August 1903. The Biltmore Estate was the last project he ever did. He ...
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This website tells about Olmstead. It tells his life prior the building the Biltmore. I learned that Olmstead created many masterpieces that compete with estates in Europe. Olmstead’s career was winding down when he built the Biltmore.
Wernick, Robert. "Here's the house that lots and lots of jack built. ." EBSCOhost. N.p.. Web. 25 Oct 2013.
This website describes the Biltmore, as a turn-of-the-century pleasure dome for the Vanderbilts, which now flourishes by giving tourists a great day for their money. It tells how George Washington Vanderbilt conceived the notion for his luxurious residence, details regarding the construction of the mansion; Restoration efforts in recent years; Who owns and runs the estate today.
Hunt designed many incredible homes during the Gilded Age, when many businessmen became rich and built huge mansions. He also designed many public buildings in New York, Boston, Newport, and Chicago. Some of his most famous works were the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, the façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Biltmore House, and two of the Newport cottages (the Breakers and the Marble House). His favorite style of architecture was Beaux-Arts, and the influence is seen in many of his designs.
By the time Hunt was selected to design the Administration Building, he was near the end of his distinguished career. The first American architect to attend the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Hunt had acquired the status of "dean of American architecture" (Stein 3). His reputation was supported by his large output of fine eclectic buildings such as the Breakers in Newport (1892-95) and Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina (1888-95), both estates for the wealthy Vanderbilt family. These two stylistically different buildings exhibit the quality of Hunt's architecture known as the "grand manner," where he achieved monumentality by combining different sources of classical architecture. This quality was what attracted the fair organizers, and it would be carried to its furthest expression in the Administration Building.
Sturdivant Hall had been constructed in 1852. This stately mansion had six tall white pillars in
family was they had three-rooms which were placed on a hill facing the "Big House". The
Reflecting the excesses of the Gilded Age, Vizcaya, named after a northern province in Spain, is often called the “Hearst Castle of the East.” With soaring ceilings, sinuous staircases, beautifully textured walls, and monumental columns, Vizcaya is no shrinking violet!
In the book The Great Gatsby, Gatsby always had the impression of being rich. He always stated he went to Oxford University, and his family was stinky filthy rich back in the mid west, San Francisco. In reality he wasn’t rich at all, he was born into a
The house was built in 1917 by William Bowers Bourn, a San Francisco millionaire whose wealth came from gold mining . Construction of the large property took 2 years, while it took 12 years to build the formal gardens, which were completed in 1929. Its name was created by Bourn, using the first 2 letters from the key words of his credo: “Fight for a just cause; Love your fellow man; Live a good life.” After the deaths of Bourn and his wife in 1936, it was purchased by William Roth, another prominent San Franciscan, who pr...
Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13,1743 in Shadwell, Virginia. He was born into a family that had status, wealth, and tradition of public service. Jefferson was the third child in the family and grew up with six sisters and one brother. Thomas Jefferson was well educated; he attended private schools and at the age of seventeen he attended the College of William and Mary. Thomas Jefferson was interested in being a scientist, after learning that there was no opportunity for a career in science in Virginia he then studied law. In 1767, Thomas Jefferson was admitted to the bar in 1769, when Jefferson public career started he already owned more than twenty-five hundred acres that he inherited from his father who died in 1757. After marring his wife Martha Wayles Skelton whom was a young widow his property doubled. After the death of Martha’s parents, his property doubled again.
Thomas Jefferson had many talents. One of his talents was that he was an architectural engineer. With this talent he helped design many things like the city of Washington D.C., the University of Virginia, and his home called Monticello. He designed the rotunda for the University of Virginia library in 1821 (Greene 37).
"I am as happy nowhere else and in no other society, and all my wishes end, where I hope my days will end, at Monticello," wrote Thomas Jefferson the great architect of his home, Monticello. His home of 54 years was named Monticello which means "little mountain" in Italian. Many still question the reasoning for the name "Monticello." The only reasoning that was come up with was that Jefferson wanted to build his home on his mountain located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia near Charlottesville. He wanted a place that was private and away from civilization and the commotion of politics.
On April 23, 1791, a great man was born; fifteenth president of the United States, James Buchanan.He was born near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. His father, James Buchanan, and his mother Elizabeth Speer Buchanan, raised their son a Presbyterian. He grew up in a well to do home, being the eldest of eleven other siblings. His parents cared for them all in their mansion in Pennsylvania. They sent him to Dickinson College.
Landscape architecture has been around since the beginning of time, but it was not until Frederick Law Olmsted came along that the idea of integrating design into the landscape with plants, water, and structures that it turned into a thriving profession. To many, Olmsted is considered “a pioneer in the profession of landscape architecture, an urban planner, and a social philosopher, one of the first theoreticians and activists behind the national park and conservation movements” (Kalfus 1). Growing up, he did not ever graduate from formal schooling and just sat in on a few classes while at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. Instead, he acquired his education from being out in the world through traveling and reading. He had a hard childhood. His mother died when he was just four years old and on his journeys around the world to Europe and China, he became sickly with seasickness, paralysis of the arm, typhoid fever, apoplexy, sumac poisoning, and at times suffered from depression. For many years he went on a journey within himself to find out whom he really was and what he wanted to do with his life, career wise. Frederick had one brother, John Hull, who died in 1857. This left Olmsted feeling empty and at loss of what to do. That was when Calvert Vaux came and filled the space in Olmsted’s life that his brother left. Vaux convinced Olmsted to enter the Central Park Commissioner’s design competition with their design entitled the “Greensward Plan.” With the success in that project, Olmsted figured out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, which was to become a landscape architect. Olmsted practiced from the years of 1857 up until he retired in 1895. Olmsted’s two boys, adopted son John Charles and biological son Frederick La...
The fact that Thomas Jefferson was an untrained designer with what seems to be architectural genius would give reason enough to study and research his works. Jefferson said, “Architecture is my delight.” Monticello, the Virginia Capital, and the University of Virginia being Jefferson’s most well known architectural feats. His French style architecture can be seen all over the state of Virginia and the world.
His design was a Neo-classical plan that followed the classical style of ancient Greece and Rome. He drew a building that consists of two wings that extended north and south of a centural section. A huge cast-iron dome rests on the central section of the building.(World, 196) President Washington was very pleased with Dr. Thorton's plans and he was awarded first prize. Now it was time for Washington to lay the cornerstone on September 18, 1793.(National Park)
Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect, who was a pioneer in the modern style, is considered one of the greatest figures in 20th-century architecture. Wright was born June 8, 1867, in Richland Center, Wisconsin. When he entered the University of Wisconsin in 1884 his interest in architecture had already acknowledged itself. The university offered no courses in his chosen field; however, he enrolled in civil engineering and gained some practical experience by working part time on a construction project at the university. In 1887 he left school and went to Chicago where he became a designer for the firm of Adler and Sullivan with a pay of twenty-five dollars a week. Soon Wright became Louis Sullivan’s chief assistant. Louis Sullivan, Chicago based architect, one of America’s advanced designers. Louis had a profound influence on Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright was assigned most of the firm’s home projects, but to pay his many debts he designed ‘Bootlegged Houses’ for private clients in his spare time. Sullivan disapproved, resulting in Wright leaving the firm in 1893 to establish his own office in Chicago.