The American Guide Series, produced by the Federal Writers’ Project, is one of the most well-known WPA projects. Written as a collection of travel guides, the series included suggested tour routes as well as essays on the history and culture of each U.S. state and territory. Major U.S. cities and several regions were also given their own separate guidebooks.
The state guides give a fascinating snapshot of American life in the 1930s. Written in a lively and approachable style, they detail and celebrate the rich diversity that our country displayed at that time. The writers’ enthusiasm is infectious and their guide is as much fun to read today as it must have been for travelers in the 1930s.
Several historians have written about the American Guide Series over the past 80 years, but no one, to my knowledge, has used them as current-day travel guides. That is just what I set out to do. I am an American historian, art photographer, and enthusiastic traveler. I have read each of these guides. I love them for their wonderful enthusiasm and their curiosity about every aspect of regional life—from food, to linguistics, to folklore, to statistics, to geography, to environment, to history—and especially for their liberal attitudes and respect for diversity. In this series, I will be posting photo essays and articles based upon tours recommended in the guides.
Fern L. Nesson
In 1889, in a Gilded Age exploit, rivaling those of his contemporaries Whitney, Rockefeller and Carnegie, New York millionaire George Vanderbilt completely transformed the small city of Asheville, North Carolina. Formerly a small mill town, Vanderbilt arrived in Asheville, purchased 130,000 acres of Blue Ridge mountain land, and built an estate in the style of a French chateau. At 175,000 square feet, it was (and still is) the largest house in the United States.
The North Carolina Guide devoted many pages to describing this fantastic, over-the-top creation:
“The BILTMORE ESTATE (open 9:30-6 daily; adm. $2 per person), entrance on Lodge St. from Biltmore Village, comprises 12,000 acres of farm and forest lands including the landscaped grounds surrounding Biltmore House, the Biltmore Dairies, a reservation for wildlife propagation, and 15 highly developed farms operated by tenants.”
Vanderbilt hired the best. Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park in New York City, was his landscape architect.
“The 50 acres immediately surrounding Biltmore House are laid out in terraces and gardens. The front approach is a grass-carpeted esplanade with a circular pool in the center. At the eastern end of the esplanade the Rampe Douce, an ornate stone structure designed in the manner of the one in the gardens of the chateau of Vaux le Vicomte in France, gives access to bridle paths that traverse the thickly wooded slopes. Beyond a hedge are the spring gardens containing one of the most complete collections of trees in the South.”
The house itself was designed by Richard Morris Hunt. Hunt trained in architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The guide praises “Hunt’s intelligent handling of the mass of the [Biltmore Estate] building and of the beautifully executed details. There is revealed an understanding of the spirit that produced the original style, instead of the copybook attitude of most of his contemporaries.”
NC Guide p. 133.
Completed in 1895 after five years of construction, the Biltmore resembles the French Renaissance chateuax at Blois and at Chambord in the Loire Valley:
“The house covers an area of 4 acres with frontage of 780 feet. The facade rises in three distinct stories, graduating in height from the elaborate portal to the finial cresting on the roof. The severity of the mass is relieved by the characteristic French peaked roof with dormer windows and lofty chimney stacks. The walls are of hand-tooled Indiana limestone; the roof is of slate.”
NC Guide p. 144.
The interior is vast: 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, 65 fireplaces and room after room of high-ceilinged spaces for entertaining guests. The interiors are elaborate, filled with art, books, furniture, carved wood, stained glass and finely-cut stonework:
“The main portal opens into the front hall, 75 feet in height, with Guastavino tile ceiling. At the left of the hall a spiral stairway, modeled after that of the Chateau de Blois, and supported by its own arch construction, leads to the topmost floor. The hand-wrought bronze railing of the stair encircles a chandelier of wrought iron with a cluster of lights for each landing. Adjoining the front hall is the court of palms containing a fountain ornamented with the figures of a boy and a swan.
The dining room walls are covered with Spanish leather above a marble wainscot. At one end is a Wedgwood fireplace. The banquet hall is designed in the Norman tradition. Over the triple fireplace that almost covers one end of the room is a frieze representing the Return from the Chase. Five 16th-century tapestries depicting the story of Vulcan and the loves of Venus and Mars, hang from the wall […]
In the print room […] the family tree of Maximilian the Great [and] the six engravings on each side of this piece are by Durer. In this room is an inlaid chess table reputed to have been used by Napoleon I during his exile on St. Helena. A dull stain in the table drawer, tradition relates, marks the place where the heart of the Emperor lay hidden until it could be smuggled into France for burial […]
The library is paneled in Circassian walnut. The ceiling painting is the work of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), last outstanding artist of the Venetian school […] The shelves contain some 25,000 volumes, among them rare works on art, architecture, and gardening. An upstairs corridor displays the red velvet train of Cardinal Richelieu.”
North Carolina Guide p. 145-46.
Although the Vanderbilts indulged in extravagantly European-style decoration in their house and garden, they were equally devoted to conservation of the natural forest surrounding the grounds:
“In 1892, Mr. Vanderbilt appointed Gifford Pinchot superintendent of the Biltmore forests, enabling him to institute the first large-scale reforestation project in the United States. (In 1895, Pinchot left Vanderbilt to become first Chief of the United States Division of Forestry where he worked tirelessly and successfully to conservation of American forest lands.)
And after the death of her husband in 1916, Mrs. Vanderbilt sold 80,600 acres to the United States Government to form the nucleus of the Pisgah National Forest.”
NC Guide p. 144-5.
The Biltmore estate is now run by a trust. As the Guide noted, in 1939, it cost $2 to visit, Now, it costs $86. But, aside from the price, nothing has changed. Every stick of furniture, every book in the library, every painting is still in its original place and in perfect condition. Sprinkled throughout are family mementos and the guides in delight in pointing out the personal details. In the library, for example, the guide told me that Vanderbilt kept a handwritten list of every book he had read. On each guest bedroom door the slot to hold the calling card of a visitor contains the card of an actual person who stayed in that room. It’s not homey and it is somewhat exhausting to take it all in but a visit is definitely an interesting experience—the gilded Age at its most extravagant but by no means totally vulgar.
February, 2022
