What is up with "no sketching?" I've never encountered that before and it made me want to see if I could get away with that more so than photography. Video cameras were rife in the Biltmore Estate today. Here are two I managed to sneak when I thought no one was looking. The bowling alley reminded me of the one in There Will Be Blood.
I had to photograph the swimming pool. Hearst Castle has one up on the Vanderbilts in this category: no water, no blue mosaic tile, no windows, etc. It's also the story of the trip as every swimming pool has something wrong with it.
Two rooms I loved: the gymnasium complete with equipment that looked like it came straight out of a torture chamber - that's a rowing machine on the floor and showers with "needle baths" on the right (the next two images are scrounged from google)...
.... and the library... oh the library.... complete with a gargantuan yellow globe and three pieces of the most unusual furniture I've ever seen: wooden ladders/roving pedestals that looked like chariots that required horses to draw them around the room; a "bookshelf" that resembled a grand piano to display the front of books and also served as a container to reshelf them; and a mystery book press for the large editions of the many art books George Vanderbilt owned.
Update: A far better image of the library, c. 1910.
Two random images to end the day... The Inn at the Biltmore Estates Lobby.
No this isn't an advertisement for a motor home. The driver pulled up as I was debating taking a photograph of a building too far in the distance facing the sun. He even asked if he was "blocking the view" to which I secretly thought, "No, you're making a more interesting photograph."
Obsessive Compulsive bit of information discovered: 30,000 swabs of cotton were used in the recent restoration of the Louis XV guest rooms.
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