Biltmore Estate is a large private estate and tourist attraction in Asheville, North Carolina. Biltmore House, the main house on the estate, was built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895 and is the largest privately owned house in the United States. Still owned by one of Vanderbilt's descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age. Biltmore has four acres of floor space and a total of 252 rooms in the house including 33 bedrooms for family and guests, 43 bathrooms, 65 fireplaces, three kitchens and 19th-century novelties such as electric elevators, forced-air heating, centrally controlled clocks, fire alarms and an intercom system. The Gilded Age mansions were built in the United States in a short historic period spanning between the 1870s until about 1900. Raised by the nation's industrial, financial and commercial elite who amassed great fortunes coinciding with an era of expansion of the railroads, steel and fossil fuels industries, economic, technical and scientific progress, and a complete lack of personal income tax. This made possible the very rich to build mansions designed by prominent architects of its day and decorated with antiquities, furnitures, collectibles and works of art, many imported from Europe. Photographed by Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1938.