1. Asheville
Western North Carolina is topographically the most diverse part of the state and therefore offers one of the richest travel experiences. Asheville, some 125 miles from Charlotte, is the area’s gateway.
Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa Rivers, it had been settled in 1794 by John Barton, who had originally named it “Morristown” after Robert Morris, a financier of the American Revolution, but it had been later changed to honor Governor Samuel Ashe. With the 1880 arrival of the Western North Carolina Railroad, it had developed as a livestock and tobacco market, and is today the economic and recreational center for western North Carolina and a tourism base for the area’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Cherokee Indian culture.
Second only to Miami in art deco architecture, Asheville offers several interesting sights.
The Basilica of St. Lawrence, for example—jointly developed by Spanish architect Rafael Gustavia and Richard Sharp Smith—is a Spanish Renaissance design in brick and tile with a self-supporting dome and Catalan-style vaulting. It had been completed in 1908.
The early life of Thomas Wolfe, Asheville’s famous novelist, can be gleaned from a tour of the 29-room Queen Anne-style house in which he had grown up. It is now a designated state historic site.
Nucleus of the arts, Asheville is the cultivation point of painters, sculptures, and potters, who perfect their crafts in the Riverside Arts District.
Asheville’s—and all of North Carolina’s—most famous and most visited sight, however, is Biltmore Estate. Designed by Richard Morris Hunt and landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted (of New York’s Central Park fame), the 255-room, French Renaissance chateau, having required a five-year construction period during the height of the Gilded Age and some 1,000 workers, had been the result of George Washington Vanderbilt’s trips to the area in the early-1880s and his decision to have a summer residence, reminiscent of the chateaux’s lining France’s Loire Valley, built there. It is today the US’s largest private residence and is still partly used for that purpose by Vanderbilt descendants.
The Vanderbilts, one of the country’s wealthiest and most prominent families headed by Cornelius Vanderbilt, had amassed their wealth through railroads, corporations, and philanthropic activities. Passing the torch to the second generation, headed by William Henry Vanderbilt, he had been able to perpetuate his success, while William Henry himself had fathered the third generation, having four sons. George Washington Vanderbilt, one of them, had been the least active in developing the family’s business.
Opening Biltmore House on Christmas Eve in 1895, he had engaged in scientific farming, stock breeding, and forestry, and brought his bride, Edith Stuyvessant Dresser, there, three years later. His only daughter, Cornelia, had been born in the house in 1900, and thirty years later, it had been opened to the public.
The massive house, accessible by both escorted and unescorted tours, offers a glimpse into this century-old, opulent lifestyle. The entrance hall, portal to this era, had been the same access point used by the Vanderbilts and their guests and leads round the glass-roofed winter garden. Perhaps the most grandiose room on the ground floor is the banquet hall. Stretching seven stories to the wooden ceiling, it features huge tables, three massive fireplaces, Flemish tapestries from the 1500s, and a 1916 Skinner pipe organ mounted on its own loft. It had been the location of the estate’s parties, galas, and affairs.
The private sitting and bedrooms of George and Edith Vanderbilt are located on the second floor, although, of particular note, is the Louis XV bedroom, location of Cornelia’s birth and the subsequent birth of her own two sons.
Most of the servants’ bedrooms are located on the fourth floor.
The house’s basement, location of additional servant bedrooms, features several kitchens and pantries and the recreational facilities, inclusive of a gymnasium, a 70,000-gallon indoor swimming pool, and one of the country’s first private residence bowling alleys.
Sitting on 8,000 acres of land, Biltmore Estate features several other facilities of interest.
Fronted by a grass esplanade inspired by the gardens of the 17th-century Chateau de Vaux-le-Viconte in Melun, France, it features Italian, shrub, walled, spring, and azalea gardens, and a full conservatory.
Self-guided tours of the Biltmore Winery can be made, followed by a visit to the extensive wine and delicacy gift shop, while the nearby River Bend Farm, once the center of the estate’s farming community, is comprised of a barn, a farmyard, and the Kitchen Garden, where its “field-to-table” program items are grown, before being used in the dishes served in all of its restaurants. Aside from this produce and its wines, the dairy division of Biltmore produces its own ice cream.
Adjacent to the Biltmore Estate entrance is historic Biltmore Village. Also co-designed by building architect Richard M. Hunt and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, and constructed between 1897 and 1905, it had been intended as a picturesque residential prelude to Biltmore Estate itself with a fan-shaped layout leading to the church, the railroad depot, and the estate’s entrance, its focal points. Its cottages had first been occupied in 1900.
Today, it offers the quaint atmosphere of an English country village with tree-lined streets, brick sidewalks, period architecture, some ten restaurants and tearooms, and 30 shops and galleries. In 1989, it had been declared an historic area and local historical district.
Aside from Biltmore Estate, the Grove Park Inn, overlooking the city, is another opulent building listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The ruggedly beautiful, 512-room hotel, made of boulders hewn from the nearby Sunset Mountains, opened in 1913 and features massive stone fireplaces, four dining rooms, indoor waterfalls, a 40,000-square-foot spa, and beautiful views. It has hosted an endless list of prominent people, from politicians to movie stars.
Two small, but interesting museums are located on its ground, and their buildings can be directly traced to the Vanderbilts. Mrs. Vanderbilt, particularly, had been very interested in homespun fabrics, and ultimately established Biltmore Industries, a craft education program, which had later been sold to Fred Seely, son-in-law of Edwin W. Grove, himself architect and manager of the Grove Park Inn. Its weaving activities had been relocated to the small buildings currently on its grounds, whereafter it had achieved worldwide recognition for its hand-loomed fabrics.
In 1953, Henry Blomberg purchased the business from the Seely family and continued it until 1980. The daughters and sons-in-law of Blomberg, who had died 11 years later, restored the six English cottages and their surrounding landscapes, and created the two museums.
The first of these, the North Carolina Homespun Museum, had been opened to depict the history of Biltmore Industries originally founded on Biltmore Estate, but relocated to the present site in 1917, and exhibits examples of handiwork by North Carolina natives. America’s heritage of handiwork, which is now more than 200 years old, still thrives in the southern Appalachian Mountains. The museum itself displays a four-harness loom and examples of homespun fabric.
The second museum, the Estes-Winn Antique Car Museum, once housed 40 looms, but currently displays four horse-drawn vehicles and 19 automobiles, including a 1913 Ford Model “T,” a 1926 Cadillac, a 1929 Ford Model “A” with a rumble seat, a 1940 Packard “120” Coupe, and a 1959 Edsel, all in still-running, pristine condition.
The Grovewood Gallery, housed in a 1917 English Cottage next to the two museums, sells handmade furniture, ceramics, jewelry, glass, and artwork.
2. Chimney Rock Park
A popular day trip from Asheville is that to Chimney Rock Park. Located 25 miles away via winding, scenic Route 74-A, it had had its origins in 1900 when Dr. Lucius Morse, a physician from St. Louis in search of a better climate, had been entranced by its wall of stone and had envisioned a park incorporating it. Purchasing 64 acres of Chimney Rock Mountain two years later, he had taken the initial step toward that goal, but had elected to build an elevator inside it so that all could access its summit.
In 2007, the state of North Carolina had purchased the park from the Morse family, which had continued to own and administer it since its 1902 acquisition.
The 198-foot-long tunnel, leading from the parking lot to the elevator, had been created by blasting through 509-million-year-old rock designed “Henderson Gneiss,” which had formed as magma deep within the earth and had crystallized as igneous rock called “granite.” During the later formation of the Appalachian Mountains, it had metamorphosed into its present Gneiss form.
The 30-second elevator ride, which ascends 26 stories, could only be constructed after proper surveying had been conducted from its top and a 258-foot-high hoistway, requiring eight tons of dynamite and an 18-month construction period, had been drilled and blasted.
Completed on December 23, 1948, it had been North Carolina’s tallest elevator at the time,