Thursday, December 21, 2017
All about a place ordinary North Carolinians love to visit but a place built for the high and mighty: Biltmore House. Mike Collins explores it’s fascinating history.
George W. Vanderbilt came from New York society. His annual income from his inheritance was netting him a half-million dollars a year in 1888. What to do with all that money?
His friends were building summer cottages, but he didn’t want his in Newport with everyone else. Instead, he looked south to Asheville. Those dreams for a cottage turned into the 175,000-square foot Biltmore House, America’s largest home, a temple to the Gilded Age.
That home has become a tourist attraction allowing ordinary folks to peer into the lavish lifestyle of a by-gone era. Its history is storied and fascinating and told in Denise Kiernan’s new book The Last Castle. She shares the story with us.
This show originally aired November 29, 2017
Guest
Denise Kiernan- Author of The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home. She is also the author of The Girls of Atomic City and several other books.
Related reading:
New York Times: Biltmore House, America’s Original McMansion
Asheville Citizen-Times: 'The Last Castle' shares untold stories of Biltmore, Vanderbilts
Wall Street Journal: A Carolina Xanadu
