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Carriage House
A visitor to Biltmore Estate while it was still George Vanderbilt's private home would have arrived in a horse-drawn carriage. During his or her stay, the horses would be cared for in the carriage house across a brick courtyard on the north side of the house. In addition to the gleaming white tiles and heavy iron hardware, the design team found massive wooden doors and rough-sawn woodwork, now worn and scraped from years of equestrian coming-and-goings. This rustic beauty was the inspiration for this collection of hand-scraped solid wood floors.
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Cider House
From the beginning, George Washington Vanderbilt's dream was that the estate should be totally self-sustaning. Produce, meats and even the dairy products used by the kitchen to feed guests and staff came directly off the property. Among the many products produced on the estate were the wonderful varieties of apples. Picked from the estate's orchards, the fruit was transformed into pies, pastries and sauces that delighted both the Vanderbilt family and guests. The warm brown tones of Bitlmoreä Cider House bring back memories of pleasurable and satisfying treats created from fresh picked autumn apples.
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Conservatory Plank
Based upon the care and attention that he put into the room, it's been speculated that George Vanderbilt's favorite place in his home might well have been the library. His vast collection of priceless leather-bound editions lines two levels of high shelves under a frescoed ceiling brought from an Italian palace. And across from a spectacular black marble fireplace stands the massive, hand-carved book rack designed by his friend and architect, Richard Morris Hunt. The richly textured wood bears beautiful chisled evidence of the woodcarving skill that went into it's creation, and was an immediate first choice as an inspiration for a family of individually hand-scraped engineered planks.
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Esplanade
One has to only stand on the massive front steps in front of the hand-carved entrance doors of the Biltmore Houseâ to appreciate the magnificent Esplanade that greets guests visiting America's largest privately owned, single-family home. In much the same way that the rows of poplars, the expanse of grass and flowing fountain that forms the Esplanade and introduces and welcomes guests to the hospitality of BiltmoreÔ, so too will the beautiful Esplanade Plank welcome your guests to the hospitality and warmth of your home.
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Manor House
Of course, not everyone who enjoyed Biltmore's grand ballrooms and marble staircases was lucky enough to have been Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt's guest. Keeping a 175,000 sq. ft. house running smoothly required the efforts of dozens and dozens of workers--cooks, housemaids, engineers, mechanics, stable hands...right down to scullery maids. And all of them needed a place to live, sleep, eat, and socialize. So the upper and lower floors of Biltmore House are full of kitchens, living quarters, common area and work rooms for Biltmore Estate staff. And the woodwork and furnishings of these simple, well-designed, comfortable spaces made a natural inspiration for a group of authentically distressed engineered planks.
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Olmsted Forest Plank
Already world-renowned as the landscape architect of New York City's Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted was an obvious choice for Vanderbilt to take charge of designing gardens, grounds, and forests that surround Biltmore Estate. Olmstead took devastated, eroded farmland and barren, treeless hills and turned them into lush, well-managed showplaces that reflected a completely natural, unstudied appearance. The forests that enfold Biltmore Estate today-as well as the weathered outbuildings that housed the animals and equipment that maintained them-inspired a rustic suite of distressed, rustic engineered planks.
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Paddock Plank
Paddocks, or corrals, refer to small holding pens, or exercise lots, often adjacent to horse stalls. They had to be solid and secure to assure the safety of the horse, durable to stand up to the abuse that the horse was prone to produce and beautiful if they were to adorn Biltmore House®. Paddock Plank fulfills that historic pedigree. Hewn from sturdy South Hickory and hand crafted and hand scraped by artisans, this 3/4" solid hardwood floor delivers the durability to stand up to the demands of today's households and the warm beauty that says "Welcome Home" to its owners.
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Preservation Plank
George Washington Vanderbilt loved the forests. In fact, with the help of Frederick Law Olmsted and Gifford Pinchot, he returned 87,000 acres of over-farmed, cleared woodlands into what is today the Pisgah National Forest. Biltmore Preservation Plank commemorates this preservation effort by using exotic, fast growing, sustainable materials to product this enviromentally friendly flooring product. Made from mulberry strands, Preservation Plank delivers a contemporary, functional beauty in a flooring that is durable enough for a commercial kitchen.
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Restoration Plank
While the furniture and woodwork throughout the Biltmore House came from around the globe and across the centuries, much of it shares a common warm richness and deep, lustrous color palette. Was this an intentional choice on Mr. Vanderbilt's part, or merely a reflection of the inherent beauty these priceless objects share? Who can say. But from the dressing table in his own luxurious bedroom to a torchere in the entrance hall, the glowing colors that radiate throughout the house were an obvious inspiration for a collection of hand-stained, hand-rubbed, wide-plank engineered floors.
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Rio San Juan
Before the Panama Canal opened in 1914, Cornelius Vanderbilt had a freight system that took goods that were freighted from the Pacific to the San Juan River in Nicaragua and carried them to the Atlantic. Since BiltmoreÔ opened to the public in December of 1895, it is likely that many of the Asian accessories and mahogany furniture may have traveled along this very route. BiltmoreÔ Rio San Juan Plank is hand-scraped by artisans out of exotic Spanish Mahogany that could have come from that same Nicaraguan river bank from which it got its name.
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Tenpin Alley
G.W. Vanderbilt believed in physical fitness and loved athletic games. He even had a bowling alley built in the basement of Biltmore House®. Sometimes friends would gather and play "Kingpin" and other times, "Candle Sticks" but the game most of us think of today when we think of bowling is "Tenpin". Bowling alleys then, as today, were most often constructed from hard-rock maple because of its inherent hardness and resistance to denting. Tenpin Alley is well named too as it is constructed from maple hardwoods and built to stand up to the challenges of an active family while remaining warm and beautiful in appearance.
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