Pictured here in 1900 with his daughter Cornelia, George Washington Vanderbilt II was a prominent art collector and heir to the huge Vanderbilt steamboat and railroad fortune. In 1888, at the age of 26, George set about building the thing he would become best known for: the enormous Biltmore estate.

He bought 125,000 acres (50,585ha) of woodland in Asheville, North Carolina, and cleared a space for the site, employing architect Richard Morris Hunt to design the vast home and the 'father' of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmstead, to plan the extensive gardens. Together, they created one of the best-known and most striking estates in US history.

Vanderbilt has one more claim to fame, though. He and his wife Edith narrowly missed perishing on HMS Titanic after they changed their ticket at the last minute to sail instead on the doomed vessel's sister ship, the Olympic. Sadly, one of their servants, footman Frederick Wheeler, who was travelling on the Titanic with the Vanderbilt's luggage, died in the disaster.

The biggest mansions in America will amaze you