The start of fabrication: The copper cupola for mahogany conservatory roof lantern takes shape.

Another of the many interesting conservatory projects Tanglewood is working on right now is a large conservatory, or it might be more of an orangerie, that is fashioned after the beautiful conservatory at the Biltmore Estate in Ashville, North Carolina.

The Biltmore mansion is one of the largest private homes ever built in the United States. It encloses 4 acres of floor space, 250 rooms, 34 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces. The grounds of the original 125,000-acre estate were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the famous landscape architect who also created New York’s City’s Central Park.

If you look at a picture of the front of the Biltmore house, the conservatory is located just to the right side of the main entry on the opposite side from the iconic stair tower with the diagonal windows. It is an extraordinary room with huge, ornately moulded oak truss beams supporting a glass roof and cupola. The entire roof structure is covered with copper on the exterior.

There is another often photographed greenhouse conservatory on the estate which is located in the garden but it is more of an industrial type building made of steel trusses supported on brick walls.

Our client, who is also building a sizable estate in the rural mountains, had visited the Biltmore Estate in part to gather ideas for their new home. One of the rooms they saw that captured their imagination was the unusual garden room conservatory, the design of which they decided to incorporate into theirs.

So the task of adapting the great conservatory garden room at the Biltmore Estate into our clients design fell to Tanglewood’s team working under the overall direction of the project architect. What emerged is a truly remarkable piece of craftsmanship which is just now taking shape in the Tanglewood workshop.

The interior of the entire structure in this case will be made from Honduran Mahogany which will be stained a deep rich tone and the entire exterior, including the windows themselves, is made of copper with soldered joinery.

Large ornately-moulded mahogany beams are being constructed and will be used to support the roof structure, as in the Biltmore conservatory.

I will post more pictures and descriptions of the work on the main structure as it progresses.

Alan