The Queen of Versailles, starring Kristin Chenoweth and featuring music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, closed on December 21, 2025, after an abbreviated run on Broadway.
THE CLOSEST THING to the Palace of Versailles in the United States is Biltmore, the Gilded Age mansion constructed for George Washington Vanderbilt II near Asheville, North Carolina. The stone and timber pile remains the largest privately owned house in the country. There’s a big qualification there: The house is privately owned, but no one lives in it. A group of Vanderbilt heirs run the mansion and its grounds as a tourist attraction, resort, and winery.
Biltmore made an impression on me as a schoolkid, not just for its unrivaled scale and storybook site in the Pisgah National Forest—or its bowling alley, electric lighting, and dozens of themed Christmas trees. Above all, I was struck by the fact that this mansion was a completely impractical place to live, and had been for decades. Given modern obstacles like fair wages, taxation, and energy prices, the richest person on…
