Qualla: Reynolda House Museum of American Art

Reynolda House Museum of American Art: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mcintern2012 of English Wikipedia, CC0. R. J. Reynolds was already dying of pancreatic cancer when his family moved into Reynolda in December 1917. He had been waiting five years for the house. He lived in it for less than a year. He died at the bungalow-style mansion on July 29, 1918, and the wealth that had built it, the wealth of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, kept building Reynolda after him: a model village, a working dairy, a 16-acre lake stocked with bass, a 1,067-acre estate run as a self-contained world on the western edge of Winston-Salem.

Image: Mcintern2012 of English Wikipedia | CC0

Reynolda House Museum of American Art: Katharine's Project

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Reynolda was, more than anything, Katharine Smith Reynolds's project. Design and construction ran from 1912 through 1917. She hired Charles Barton Keen, a Philadelphia-trained architect already known for country houses in Pennsylvania and New York, to design not just the main hou...

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Reynolda House Museum of American Art: How the Money Was Made

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit P. Hughes, CC BY 4.0. The fortune that paid for Reynolda came from cigarettes. The R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company introduced Camel cigarettes in 1913 and turned them into one of the most successful consumer products of the twentieth century. The Winston-Salem factories that produced them ran on tobacc...

Image: P. Hughes | CC BY 4.0

Reynolda House Museum of American Art: From Vacation House to Museum

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zsrarticle, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1934, R. J. and Katharine's elder daughter Mary Reynolds Babcock acquired the estate. She and her husband Charles Babcock used Reynolda as a vacation home until 1948, when they moved in permanently. The house remained the family's for nearly fifty years. After Mary Babcock's d...

Image: Zsrarticle | CC BY-SA 4.0

Reynolda House Museum of American Art: The Collection

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gilbert Stuart, Public domain. Reynolda's permanent collection covers three centuries of American art and sculpture, hung throughout the historic rooms rather than corralled in dedicated galleries. The roster reads like an American survey: Gilbert Stuart's 1809 portrait of Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis. Edward Hicks...

Image: Gilbert Stuart | Public domain

Reynolda House Museum of American Art: The Village That Remains

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frederic Edwin Church, Public domain. Twenty-eight of the original thirty buildings on the estate still stand. Reynolda Village, once the working heart of the farm operation, is now occupied by boutiques, restaurants, and shops along Reynolda Road. Lake Katharine, behind the house, has reverted from a stocked recreat...

Image: Frederic Edwin Church | Public domain