What could possibly connect Asheville to tropical Havana?
When I look at these Cuban Art Deco illustrations — a lawn tennis match, an equestrian couple beside a white horse, the outrageously modern woman with bobbed hair and cigarette, or even the elegant swimmer at the beach — I surprisingly think of Asheville in North Carolina and the magnificent Biltmore Estate during its early years.
It's an odd connection, you might say. There’s no tropical beach in the mountains of Asheville.
Yet, the connection is in the word "Biltmore".
This vintage art was created to reflect 1920s Cuba and was almost certainly inspired by the scene at Havana's most exclusive address at the time: the Havana-Biltmore Yacht and Country Club.
And that's exactly the point. The "Biltmore" name meant something very specific in the 1920s — and it meant the same thing whether you were in the Blue Ridge Mountains or in the Caribbean's most international capital city.
Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina (left) and the Havana-Biltmore Yacht and Country Club in Cuba (right).
(Images, Wikimedia, Creative Commons)
The original Biltmore: a sophisticated residence in the Blue Ridge Mountains
The first Biltmore was George and Edith Vanderbilt's palatial estate in Asheville, completed in 1895 and still the largest private home in the United States.
Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina
(Image, Wikimedia, Creative Commons)
George Vanderbilt named it from "Bildt" — a Dutch village his ancestors came from — combined with "more," the Old English word for rolling upland terrain.
It was a very suitable name for a family that had grown wealthy from a rising ambition and, as it turned out, a name that would travel far beyond Asheville.
One man’s inspired brand for a new era of luxury travel to Cuba
Enter John McEntee Bowman, a Canadian-born hotelier with excellent taste and no particular shame about borrowing a prestigious name.
In the 1910s and '20s, Bowman built a chain of luxury hotels and clubs called "Biltmore," deliberately evoking Vanderbilt glamour. The Vanderbilts didn't own any of them.
The name simply carried the right associations and — in an era when aspiration was practically a sport — that was enough. By the late 1920s, Biltmore properties stretched from New York to Los Angeles, Atlanta to Coral Gables.
On February 1, 1928, the Havana Biltmore Yacht and Country Club officially opened on a stretch of beachfront in Miramar — a Havana neighborhood designed, not coincidentally, to feel like an American garden suburb transplanted to the tropics.
Havana Biltmore Yacht and Country Club in Cuba - beach side view.
(Image, Wikimedia, Creative Commons)
The country club had a marina for sailing, a golf course, tennis courts, a pool, and a beautiful sandy beach, all set on sprawling grounds with an elegant Spanish Revival clubhouse.
Details from vintage Art Deco illustrations in the Atlantic and Havana collection.
Americans arrived in numbers, especially once Prohibition entered its eighth year. Cuba offered excellent rum, warm weather suited to the more revealing fashions of the era, and no moral objections to either.
Bowman himself had been managing the Havana-American Jockey Club and racetrack — he clearly understood his market.
Hotelier John McEntee Bowman; and detail from vintage illustration Polo Couple with White Horse
Two Biltmores, same society world
The society set at the Havana Biltmore and the crowd spending weekends in Asheville were, essentially, the same people — or people who wanted the same things.
Horse racing or riding. Lawn tennis or golf. Fashionable bathing costumes or the finest winter coats. They wanted to appear effortlessly elegant — which, of course, required enormous effort to maintain.
The illustrations in our Vintage Art and Graphics collection were made for exactly this world, and they were created for the most fashionable society magazine of 1920s Havana.
It may be difficult to imagine today, but during the 1910s and '20s, Havana was considered so refined that it was known as the "Paris of the Caribbean.”
The new and lavish country clubs in Havana attracted affluent travelers from across the Americas and Europe.
Wandering the Biltmore Estate and imagining the 1920s
I've not yet been to Cuba, although idle musings of Old Havana often occupy my thoughts.
But I have traveled often to the City of Asheville, and I love the architecture and lasting remnants it offers from the early 1900s, around the time the Biltmore Estate was constructed.
My visits to the original Biltmore were always enchanting. I remember moving through the grand home of over 200 rooms and imagining the family and guests as they would have appeared into the 1920s — their manners and their fashion.
In the summer months, I would picture ladies in sheer, straight-line dresses on the parlor sofas, or men in handsome linen jackets sitting out on the veranda's deep wicker chairs.
And in autumn, looking across the seemingly endless acres of the estate, I would imagine catching sight of horse riders in wool tweed and women strolling the gardens in fur-lined coats and smartly styled hats.
The era demanded the wealthy to be impeccably dressed for every moment — perfectly at ease in a quality of attire we rarely see today.
Lawn tennis in Asheville gardens or the Vedado neighborhood of Havana
I also remember learning a detail about the Biltmore Estate that is surprisingly depicted in those vintage Cuban illustrations.
There was once a lawn tennis court at the Biltmore, located near the house and next to the beautiful pergola that still stands today.
Pergola and area of former lawn tennis court at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.
(Image, Wikimedia, Creative Commons)
Edith and her daughter Cornelia Vanderbilt enjoyed tennis games there with friends, while spectators stayed cool under the vine-covered pergola supported by stone columns.
Biltmore Estate during construction in the 1890s with the original location of the lawn tennis court along the pergola. Right, our vintage 1920s art Tennis Players in Vedado.
(Image: Archival construction image, Biltmore estate - courtesy Biltmore website)
That scene — a spirited match on a shaded green lawn, with architectural garden elements all around — would have looked remarkably similar to our Art Deco illustration from Havana called "Tennis Players in Vedado."
Both worlds, it turns out, were playing the same game.
Along the Blue Ridge Mountains and in tropical Havana of the 1920s, a tennis racket, the finest fashions and a cocktail glass all looked equally at home.
Which might be why these colorful Deco-era illustrations feel so fitting, even now.
Browse our Vintage Art and Graphics collection →
