George Washington Vanderbilt (1862–1914) was the most important private client of Olmsted’s career. Olmsted worked closely with Vanderbilt on three important projects, each of which began before April 1890 but which deeply involved him during the years of this volume: the family mausoleum on Staten Island; Point d’Acadie, his summer home at Bar Harbor, Maine; and Biltmore.

George Vanderbilt was the youngest child of William Henry Vanderbilt, who had been Olmsted’s Staten Island neighbor and fellow member of the Richmond County Agricultural Society. W. H. Vanderbilt commissioned Richard Morris Hunt to design a family mausoleum on land adjacent to the Moravian Cemetery at New Dorp, Staten Island, in 1884. After his father’s death in 1885, George took charge of the project and the following year hired Olmsted to design the grounds. Although Vanderbilt was probably unaware of it, there was longstanding tension between Olmsted and Hunt: Olmsted greatly disliked Hunt’s designs for monumental entrances to the southern end of Central Park and opposed his plan for a building for the New-York Historical Society in the park. Moreover, the two men had publicly clashed over the redesign of the New York State capitol in 1876. The Vanderbilt Mausoleum was their first collaboration. Olmsted and Hunt designed an arched entry to the mausoleum grounds, while Olmsted designed an approach road and terraces in front of Hunt’s building, which was modeled after the Church of St. Gilles near Arles, France. In succeeding years they worked effectively together on the design of the World’s Columbian Exposition and Biltmore. During the years of this volume Olmsted visited the mausoleum frequently to oversee construction and planting, and he hired engineer J. James R. Croes to design and install an irrigation system for the grounds.

Vanderbilt acquired Point d’Acadie in 1889. The estate was very different from the grand mansions of his relatives in Newport, Rhode Island. It included a comparatively modest shingle style house designed by Charles C. Haight in 1869 on a point extending into Frenchman Bay. Olmsted realigned the property boundaries, designed a new approach to the house, directed the planting, and hired a gardener to carry out his plans and an engineer to [82]construct a sea wall and an enormous salt water swimming pool. Progress at Point d’Acadie was slow because of the cold winters and the difficulty of hiring able assistants and workers in that remote location, but it was an important, challenging project.

George W. Vanderbilt

Together with Vanderbilt, Olmsted first visited the site that became Biltmore in late 1888. During that initial visit Olmsted admired the spectacular scenery and the reputed healthfulness of the region but suggested that Vanderbilt abandon his plans for a gentleman’s park or farm and instead devote the site to scientific forestry. When Vanderbilt agreed with this proposal, Olmsted threw himself into the work of designing a vast estate in the Appalachian foothills. One of his first suggestions was to realign Hunt’s building on more of a north-south axis to take better advantage of the view west toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. Between late 1888 and Olmsted’s retirement from the firm in August 1895, Biltmore consumed enormous amounts of his time, energy, and creativity. It was, he believed, not simply a wealthy gentleman’s estate but a project that united science and art in ways that had profound national significance. He frequently expressed the desire to spend more time at Biltmore, which was impossible given the firm’s many commitments, and considered it the last and most important private work of his career, a project that, he believed, marked a new beginning in the practice of landscape architecture. Vanderbilt’s money and commitment to Olmsted’s vision for Biltmore made it a work of transcendent importance to Olmsted.

Privately schooled, Vanderbilt mastered eight languages, collected art voraciously, and was a philanthropist who gave generously to art organizations and libraries, causes which reflected his passions in life. He also cherished the natural world, which surely drew him and Olmsted together. Olmsted described Vanderbilt as “a delicate, refined and bookish man, with considerable humor, but shrewd, sharp exacting and resolute in matters of business.” To estate engineer Wiliam A. Thompson, Olmsted explained that his ardor for the work at Biltmore was “increased by the obviously exacting yet frank, trustful, confiding and cordially friendly disposition toward all of us which Mr. Vanderbilt manifests.”

Vanderbilt was forty years younger than Olmsted, and his relationship with the older man was cordial, indeed almost filial. Although Olmsted occasionally expressed frustration that Vanderbilt had made decisions without [83]consulting him, Vanderbilt greatly admired Olmsted and proved to be the most supportive private client with whom he worked. Vanderbilt honored Olmsted (and Hunt) in two important ways. 1n 1895 he brought the artist John Singer Sargent to Biltmore to paint their portraits, which still hang facing each other at Biltmore. He also commissioned stained glass windows for All Souls Church in Biltmore Village. The Hunt window includes the imagery of Solomon and Hiram of Tyre examining plans for the unfinished temple at Jerusalem, which stands behind them; the Olmsted window depicts Jesus and the Doctors in the Temple, perhaps an indication that Vanderbilt cherished Olmsted’s wisdom. The two stained glass windows face each other across the transept in the church Hunt designed, the centerpiece of the village Olmsted planned.

The Olmsted firm continued to work at Biltmore into the early twentieth century, when Vanderbilt, who had not entered the family business and had depleted much of his inheritance, halted improvements to the estate. Upon learning of Olmsted’s death in 1903, Vanderbilt wrote that Olmsted “had & has a special place in his esteem and affections.” He consoled Olmsted’s surviving sons by writing that their father’s “truly big and loveable nature” had “just gone on to the other world.” Vanderbilt died of heart failure in Washington, D.C., on March 6, 1914, and was buried in the Staten Island mausoleum.