For more than 70 years, visitors to America's largest house have marched up its grand staircases, imagined the lavish parties that took place in its glass-ceilinged Winter Garden and, on clear days, surveyed the unspoiled panorama to Mount Pisgah, 17 miles in the distance.

A legacy of one of the richest of American families, the 250-room Biltmore House today stands in Asheville, N.C., amid its thousands of well-manicured acres not so much as a relic of the Gilded Age, but as a testament to the genius of its creator, then-bachelor George Washington Vanderbilt III, and architect Richard Morris Hunt and landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted, both seminal figures in American design. Olmsted was the designer of New York's Central Park and the U.S. Capitol grounds, while Hunt, the go-to society architect of his day, designed the base of the Statue of Liberty and the facade of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In rural North Carolina, these three left not only a mansion like no other, but also an intricate tapestry of landscape design that included the first roots of organized forest management in the United States. One might think that such a place, costly to maintain, would have been set aside as a national or state park, or run by a foundation. But, like the best of old money, the Biltmore mansion and surrounding grounds remain owned by Vanderbilt's heirs, attracting 1 million visitors a year.

Commissioned by young Vanderbilt to build the finest private house in the United States, Hunt styled a Renaissance French chateau, a design compared to the Chateau de Blois. It would have 4 acres of floor space, 33 family and guest bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, 65 fireplaces and three kitchens. Beyond the imposing front entrance, as well as out back, were a 100,000-acre forest, a farm and commercial dairy, 250 acres of wooded park and five "pleasure gardens." A staff of hundreds was required to keep it going.

Today, "all" that is left of this barony is 8,000 acres, maintained by a staff of 1,700.

Biltmore is a house built from a man's vision, working with other men. Not until 1898, nearly three years after his palace was completed, did a woman enter the hierarchy when Vanderbilt was married in Paris at age 33 to Edith Stuyvesant Dresser. Imagine her surprise while riding in a carriage with her new husband as they coursed down Olmsted's three-mile approach road and drew up to Biltmore for the first time. From the guidebook: "When they arrived at the Estate in October, after their honeymoon in Europe, Mrs. Vanderbilt saw her room just as it appears today," decorated in the style of Louis XV.

Most country estates of the era were near the cities where their captains of industry had amassed their wealth. Biltmore set a first, Longstreth said. Far from the city, it was a working estate, with a lumber mill, dairy and farms. In doing so, Vanderbilt's vast enterprise set a course that would influence western North Carolina's economic development as well as its politics.

"In many ways, it's a stage set," Longstreth said. Distance from the other ballrooms and country estates of East Coast society proved not to be a problem for the Vanderbilts. At Biltmore's zenith, guests were met at a nearby train station in Biltmore village, to be escorted to the Vanderbilt house from their private railway carriages, the Gulfstreams of their age.

With servants and stacks of trunks, they came for days to party, to ride on the well-groomed trails or hunt on the grounds extending into four counties and, as Vanderbilt and his mother did, to take in the mountain air.

There were other diversions, such as a series of rooms known as the Bachelors Wing, where the Billiard Room is the central focus. Today, the stale odor of cigars and cigarettes is long gone, but the mounted trophies, deep-leather seats and 24 racked cue sticks around billiard and pool tables still beckon visitors.

Elsewhere, guests could use a 70,000-gallon indoor swimming pool, featuring then-rare underwater lighting, a Brunswick bowling alley with hand-set pins and a nearby gymnasium supplied with equipment by A.G. Spalding. For those with a literary bent, there was Vanderbilt's 20,000 volume library, specializing in the arts and sciences.

For six years before its formal opening on Christmas Day in 1895, the magazine noted, "British and Scottish stonemasons chipped and hammered in the Asheville woods while Mr. Vanderbilt toured Europe, sending back carload after carload of French furniture, Gothic cabinets, Jacobean tables, Japanese ivories."

Today, Biltmore presents much of its original theme. Requiring a large curatorial staff, original furnishings, artwork and mechanical systems remain, not lost to successive rounds of belt-tightening as has been the case at many of America's historic homes.

Here are prints by Albrecht Durer, a chess set once owned by Napoleon, Flemish tapestries and paintings by Renoir, Sargent, Whistler and Zorn, and plaster copies of the Elgin Marbles.

Beyond the ornate mansion, filled with its art treasures, the estate, run by Vanderbilt great-grandson William A.V. Cecil Jr., has added new diversions to keep pace with the expectations of a modern society.

Visitors can sample Biltmore-produced wines at what is billed as the most visited winery in the U.S., try their luck fly fishing, go biking on paved paths or mountain trails, and test their driving skills at a "Land Rover Driving School," as well as visit several restaurants.

There were times when Biltmore's future was uncertain, even early in its life. At the start of the 20th century, writer Howard E. Covington Jr. notes how Vanderbilt's bankroll was nearly unwound.

"Then it all stopped abruptly," he wrote of the continual construction work in his book "Lady on the Hill."

"It was — said that Vanderbilt refused — or was simply unable — to pour more cash into the estate that had consumed perhaps as much as half of his entire fortune."

A first-floor Music Room was not completed until 1976; meanwhile, other work stopped dead in its tracks with "no logic," Covington wrote. This has left the Biltmore staff with more work to do. Next year, a suite of four rooms is scheduled to go on display for the first time.

Vanderbilt died suddenly in 1914 at 51, from complications following an emergency appendectomy, leaving the estate to his widow, Edith, who remarried Rhode Island Sen. Peter Gerry in 1925.

Leaving nearby Asheville, the tree-lined road to Biltmore, past the estate's imposing gate, takes visitors through Olmsted's successive landscapes. It's a twisting, turning course that makes the approach seem much longer than the reality. At its finale, the house and its magnificent front lawn burst on the scene, not dead ahead, but at a right angle, forcing all, like a military salute, to quickly go "eyes right."

That is a theme that Covington notes as well. "A hundred years later, Hunt's mansion would leave visitors in awe, but it was Olmsted's creative genius in the use and rehabilitation of land that would set the estate apart."

Longstreth similarly was wowed: "When you go through that lengthy procession, it's like being in a park. The experience is part of the whole thing," he said.

For those making their first visit to Biltmore filled with anticipation, those first few miles through the century-old man-made fairy land truly show that "the past is prologue."

IF YOU GO

The Biltmore Estate is located in Asheville, N.C., and is open every day. Hours and prices of admission vary by season. Through Oct. 31, 2008, adult entry is $45 online and $47 at the gate Sunday-Friday. Saturday admission is $49 online and $51 at the gate. Children 9 and younger are admitted free year-round with a paying adult. Youths 10-16 are admitted free with a paying adult through Sept. 5. From Sept. 6-Oct. 31, youth admission is $22.50 online, and $23.50 at the gate Sunday-Friday; and $24.50 online and $25.50 at the gate on Saturdays. A $10 upgrade allows admission on the next day as well. Parking is free.

A comprehensive website, Biltmore.com, lists current activities, including outdoor summer concerts, specialized tours of the house and grounds and sells admission tickets. The website also has information on package tours combining admission to the estate with lodging at nearby hotels in Asheville. On the grounds are the 213-room Inn at Biltmore Estate and the Cottage, offering personal chef and butler service.

Carl Larsen is a freelance travel writer. To find out more about Carl Larsen and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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