Asheville is a city in, and the county seat of, Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the state's 12th-most populous city. According to the 2020 United States Census, the city's population was 94,589, up from 83,393 in the 2010 census. It is the principal city in the four-county Asheville metropolitan area, which had a population of 424,858 in 2010, and of 469,015 in 2020.
Historically, an estate comprises the houses, outbuildings, supporting farmland, and woods that surround the gardens and grounds of a very large property, such as a country house or mansion. It is the modern term for a manor, but lacks a manor's now-abolished jurisdictional authority. It is an "estate" because the profits from its produce and rents are sufficient to support the household in the house at its center, formerly known as the manor house. Thus, "the estate" may refer to all other cottages and villages in the same ownership as the mansion itself, covering more than one former manor. Examples of such great estates are Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, England, and Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire, England, built to replace the former manor house of Woodstock.
Biltmore Estate is a historic house museum and tourist attraction in Asheville, North Carolina. Biltmore House, the main residence, is a Châteauesque-style mansion built for George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895 and is the largest privately owned house in the United States, at 178,926 sq ft (16,622.8 m2) of floor space. Still owned by George Vanderbilt's descendants, it remains one of the most prominent examples of Gilded Age mansions.
Fair Lane was the estate of Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford and his wife, Clara Ford, in Dearborn, Michigan, in the United States. It was named after an area in Cork in Ireland where Ford's adoptive grandfather, Patrick Ahern, was born. The 1,300-acre (530 ha) estate along the River Rouge included a large limestone house, an electrical power plant on the dammed river, a greenhouse, a boathouse, riding stables, a children's playhouse, a treehouse and extensive landmark gardens designed by Chicago landscape architect Jens Jensen. The residence and part of the estate grounds are open to the public as a historical landscape and house museum and preserved as a National Historic Landmark. Part of the estate grounds are preserved as a university nature study area.
Chauncey Delos Beadle was a Canadian-born botanist and horticulturist active in the southern United States. He was educated in horticulture at Ontario Agricultural College (1884) and Cornell University (1889). In 1890 the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted hired him to oversee the nursery at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina on a temporary basis. Olmsted had been impressed by Beadle's "encyclopedic" knowledge of plants. Beadle ended up working at Biltmore for more than 60 years, until his death in 1950. He is best known for his horticultural work with azaleas, and described several species and varieties of plants from the southern Appalachian region. He and three friends, including his "driver and companion" Sylvester Owens, styled themselves the Azalea Hunters. The group traveled over the eastern United States for a period of fifteen years, studying and collecting native plants. In 1940 Beadle donated his entire collection of 3,000 plants to Biltmore Estates.
The Biltmore Company is an American firm that owns and operates Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. The company is owned by the family of William Amherst Vanderbilt Cecil, the younger grandson of George Washington Vanderbilt II.
Samuel Bowne Parsons, Jr., was an American landscape architect. He is remembered as being a founder of the American Society of Landscape Architects, helping to establish the profession.
William Amherst Vanderbilt Cecil was the operator of the Biltmore Estate through his company, The Biltmore Company.
The Omni Grove Park Inn is a historic resort hotel on the western-facing slope of Sunset Mountain within the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Asheville, North Carolina. It is a AAA Four-Diamond Hotel and has been since 2001. It has been visited by many Presidents of the United States and many other notable personages. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the hotel is an example of the Arts and Crafts style. It also features a $44 million, 40,000-square-foot (3,700 m2), modern subterranean spa, which placed number 13 worldwide in Travel + Leisure's World's Best Hotel Spas in 2008. The Grove Park Inn is a member of the Historic Hotel of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Grove Park Inn also provides guests with an 18-hole golf course routed on the hill below the hotel. Donald Ross designed the original course.
Bradford Lee Gilbert was a nationally active American architect based in New York City. He is known for designing the Tower Building in 1889, the first steel-framed building anywhere and the first skyscraper in New York City. This technique was soon copied across the United States. He also designed Atlanta's Cotton States and International Exposition of 1895, the Flatiron Building in Atlanta, and many railroad stations.
Oldfields also known as Lilly House and Gardens, is a 26-acre historic estate and house museum at Newfields in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The estate, an example of the American country house movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 2003.
Top Cottage, also known as Hill-Top Cottage, in Hyde Park, New York, was a private retreat designed by and for Franklin D. Roosevelt. Built in 1938 to 1939, during Roosevelt's second term as President of the United States, it was designed to accommodate his need for wheelchair accessibility. It was one of the earliest such buildings in the country, and the first significant building designed by a person with a disability.
Barrytown is a hamlet within the town of Red Hook in Dutchess County, New York, United States. It is within the Hudson River Historic District, a National Historic Landmark, and contains four of the Hudson River Valley estates: Edgewater, Messena, Rokeby, and Sylvania.
The Edsel and Eleanor Ford House is a mansion located at 1100 Lake Shore Drive in Grosse Pointe Shores, northeast of Detroit, Michigan; it stands on the site known as "Gaukler Point", on the shore of Lake St. Clair. The house became the new residence of the Edsel and Eleanor Ford family in 1928. Edsel Ford was the son of Henry Ford and an executive at Ford Motor Company. The estate's buildings were designed by architect Albert Kahn, its site plan and gardens by renowned landscape designer Jens Jensen. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.
The Battery Park Hotel is the name given to two hotels in Asheville, North Carolina. The one standing today is 14 stories tall and was built in 1924 by Edwin W. Grove, during a time of increased tourism in the North Carolina mountains. It replaced a Queen Anne style hotel which stood 125 feet tall. The name came from the fact that Confederate forces used the site for batteries of artillery.
Richard Sharp Smith (1852–1924) was an English-born American architect, associated with Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.
Biltmore Industries, Inc., also known as Biltmore Homespun Shops, is a historic industrial complex located adjacent to the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina, now known as Grovewood Village. Biltmore Industries was started by Eleanor Vance and Charlotte Yale, missionaries who moved to Asheville, NC in 1901.The complex of seven buildings were built about 1917 by Fred Loring Seely, and are constructed of hollow ceramic tile with stuccoed exterior wall surfaces. The buildings are The Eleanor Vance Building (1917), Charlotte Yale Building (1917), Carding and Spinning Building (1917), (Former) Weavers' Building (1923), Boiler House (1917), Gatehouse, and Guardhouse (1917). The complex produced high-quality crafts and fine hand-woven wool cloth. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
Graylyn Estate, or Graylin, is a historic estate located in Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, North Carolina and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The construction of the Norman Revival style mansion began in 1928. Associated with the house are a number of contributing outbuildings including a garage-guest house and "farm" complex. Today, Graylyn estate is used as a conference center and hotel.
