The second Vanderbilt mansion on the list (after The Breakers), the Biltmore Estate was built in 1895 by George Washington Vanderbilt II, another grandson of Commodore Vanderbilt. Designed by Richard Morris Hunt, the mansion has 250 rooms, electric lights, indoor plumbing, with water piped in from a reservoir five miles away. Big and brash, not all guests were impressed. The author Henry James once said the mansion was "strange, colossal, heartbreaking... in effect, like a gorgeous practical joke."