Weathervane Wednesday at the Biltmore Mansion, Asheville, North Carolina

 These weathervanes were photographed at the Biltmore Mansion. 

We saw several weathervanes above the gigantic Biltmore Mansion in Asheville, North Carolina. This grand estate is open to the public as a museum.  It was built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895.  The house has 250 rooms, and 178,926 square feet of living space.  It is the largest privately owned house in the United States, and it is still owned by descendants of G. W. Vanderbilt.

This area of North Carolina and Asheville survived a devastating flood in 1916.  The French Broad River rose over 20 feet, and the area known as "Biltmore Village" at the entrance to the estate was destroyed.  This is the same area that recieved significant damage just last month after Hurricane Helene dropped recording breaking amounts of rain over North Carolina.  The weathervane and the mansion were mostly unharmed, but the flooding in the area will take years of recovery effort. 

The weathervanes over the main house have the intials CV, for Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794 - 1877), the original immigrant ancestor of the wealthy Vanderbilt family in the United States.  However, these are also the initials of G.W. Vanderbilt's only daughter, Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt (1900 - 1976), who was born here and inherited the entire estate.  Her son, George Henry Vanderbilt Cecil, and William A. V. Cecil came to live on this property in the 1950s and worked to make the estate profitable by managing the dairy business, and opening up the house to the public. Now the house has over 1.4 million visitors every year.  

This family tree was on exhibit at the Biltmore Estate

We spotted a second, smaller weathervane over the
roof of the mansion.  There may be more we
couldn't see behind the house or on other turrets

For the truly curious:

The Biltmore Estate website:  https://www.biltmore.com/    

The Biltmore Estate at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biltmore_Estate  

Click here to see almost 550 other Weathervane Wednesday posts:   https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/Weathervane%20Wednesday  

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To cite/link to this blog post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Weathervane Wednesday at the Biltmore Mansion, Asheville, North Carolina", Nutfield Genealogy, posted October 16, 2024, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2024/10/weathervane-wednesday-at-biltmore.html: accessed [access date]).