At 178,926 square feet, the Gilded Age estate dwarfs the White House by a factor of three and puts Hearst Castle (at 70,000 square feet) to shame in square footage (my comment, but certainly NOT the view from Hearst).
The estate took six years to complete, starting in 1889. A special three-mile railroad spur, which cost George Vanderbilt $80,000 to create (over $2 million today), ferried men and materials to work. Construction on the house required 1,000 workers and 60 stonemasons. A woodworking factory and a brick kiln, which produced 32,000 bricks a day, were also built on site. The house contains more than 11 million bricks.
On May 15, 1930, Edith Vanderbilt opened the Biltmore home to the public to offset the costs of running the estate (George died of appendicitis in 1914). At the time, yearly taxes were $50,000, around $800,000 today.

America’s foremost landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted of New York City’s Central Park fame, created every curve, bump, rise, and descent of the roadway. Alongside, he planted flowering mountain laurel and rhododendron, thickets of river cane, grasses and ferns, and groves of hemlocks and pines. Every bend reveals a surprise. An outcropping of boulders. A burbling waterfall and stream. A stone bridge. A serene pond.

The library houses 10,000 volumes on its walnut shelves beneath the ceiling’s striking oil painting, The Chariot of Aurora, from a Venetian palace ballroom. Assembled in 13 sections, the central canvas alone weighs 500 pounds. George would often ship his books to a bookbinder that would return his books covered in Moroccan leather with gilt lettering and decoration