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Building
Biltmore In the early 1960s, Asheville's Biltmore House was, in the accountant's parlance, bleeding red ink. The 250-room French Renaissance Chateau, which had been opened for tourism in 1930 at the city and county's request, was losing $250,000 a year. Profits from Biltmore Dairy were used to shore up the losses, but at the rate things were going, the house would soon milk the dairy dry. The grandson of George Washington Vanderbilt knew that the estate could not cling to such a precarious financial precipice for long. So the young junior officer at New York's Chase National Bank did what Asheville native Thomas Wolfe could not do: He returned home. William Amherst Cecil, who was born and raised in the sprawling Biltmore House, returned to "see what could be done about the old family homestead," an 8,000-acre dairy farm and country estate. With his wife and children by him, Bill Cecil began the arduous process of putting the family home on the road to self-sustainability. He launched a vigorous marketing campaign that included offering photos of the Biltmore House to newspapers. In those fledgling days of building a business, he wore all caps — manager, promoter, ticket salesman. "The work was so diverse,"he says. "If I tired of doing one thing, I could go do another." He experimented with growing mushrooms and salad tomatoes for distribution. "We did anything that we could,"he says. "Even landscaping for outsiders. We couldn’t afford a full-time landscaping crew, so we tried to fill in their time doing work off the estate."After eight years, Cecil had reversed the tide, and in 1968, the house realized a profit, $16.34. Black ink never looked so good. "It made my day,"Cecil says, adding perspective: "It certainly was better than losing half-a-million dollars." At last, Biltmore House was able to sustain itself without needing subsidies from the dairy farm, so in 1979, Bill and his brother George split their inheritance — George took the farm and some land; Bill held on to the house and grounds. Nearly 1 million visitors pass through the gates today, compared with 361,000 visitors in 1979. 1998 revenues, the last year for which figures were available, exceeded $53 million, compared to 1979 revenues of $3 million. In 2001, Biltmore opened a deluxe inn on the property, and with it, created many more new jobs. Biltmore now has a payroll of more than 1,500 employees, compared with 129 in 1979. Admission to Biltmore, $2.50 in the early 60s, is now $36. "When it was $2.50, you got to see the ground floor, the gardens, the greenhouse and the dairy barn, and that was about it,"Cecil says. What makes Bill Cecil's story even more interesting is that had his grandfather not died of a heart attack at age 54, the estate may never have had the chance to fulfill George Vanderbilt's ambition for a self-sustaining estate. Shortly before his death, Vanderbilt was lobbying the U.S. Department of Agriculture to take control of the house. The wealthy Vanderbilt had spent most of his inheritance building the house, and now the country’s new income and inheritance taxes meant that he could no longer afford the upkeep. To stay solvent following her husband's death, Vanderbilt's widow deeded away all but 11,000 of 125,000 acres. Had it not been for her prudence, Biltmore would not have been what it is today. Bill Cecil's grandfather will be remembered for constructing a country estate of magnificent proportion, but his grandson receives credit for assuring that the estate would be around for generations to come. It is one thing to build a house but quite another to maintain it. Cecil retired from Biltmore in 1995, during the centennial year of the house’s opening. He left the business in the care of his son, Bill Jr., who became CEO and president. |
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Grizzle, 28 Kenilworth Road, Asheville, North Carolina 28803 |
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