<P> After the divorce of the Cecils in 1934, Cornelia left the estate never to return; however, John Cecil maintained his residence in the Bachelors' Wing until his death in 1954 . Their eldest son George Henry Vanderbilt Cecil, occupied rooms in the wing until 1956 . At this point Biltmore House ceased to be a family residence and has continued to be operated as a historic house museum . </P> <P> Younger son William A.V. Cecil, Sr. returned to the estate in 1960 and joined his brother to manage the estate and make it a profitable and self - sustaining enterprise like his grandfather envisioned . He eventually inherited the estate upon the death of his mother, Cornelia, in 1976, while his brother, George, inherited the then more profitable dairy farm which was split off into Biltmore Farms . In 1995, while celebrating the 100th anniversary of the estate, Cecil turned over control of the company to his son, William A.V. Cecil, Jr . The Biltmore Company is privately held and of the 4,306.86 acres that make up Biltmore Estate, only 1.36 acres are in the city limits of Asheville, and the Biltmore House is not part of any municipality . </P> <P> The estate was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963, and remains a major tourist attraction in Western North Carolina with over 1 million visitors each year . </P> <P> Vanderbilt commissioned prominent New York architect Richard Morris Hunt, who had previously designed houses for various Vanderbilt family members, to design the house in the Châteauesque style, using French Renaissance chateaus that Vanderbilt and Hunt had visited in early 1889, including Château de Blois, Chenonceau and Chambord in France and Waddesdon Manor in England, as inspiration with their steeply pitched roofs, turrets and sculptural ornamentation . Hunt sited the four - story Indiana limestone - built home to face east with a 375 - foot facade to fit into the mountainous topography behind . The facade is asymmetrically balanced with two projecting wings connecting to the entrance tower with an open loggia to the left side and a windowed arcade to the right which held the Winter Garden that was fashionable during the Victorian era . The entrance tower contains a series of windows with decorated jambs that extend from the front door to the most decorated dormer at Biltmore on the fourth floor . The carved decorations include trefoils, flowing tracery, rosettes, gargoyles, and at prominent lookouts, grotesques . The staircase is one of the more prominent features of the east facade, with its three - story, highly decorated winding balustrade with carved statues of St. Louis and Joan of Arc by the Austrian - born architectural sculptor Karl Bitter . </P>

When was the biltmore opened to the public