Qualla: Reynolds Building

Reynolds Building: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alexisrael, CC BY-SA 3.0. Every year on Father's Day, according to a piece of corporate folklore that nobody has ever quite been able to disprove, the staff of the Empire State Building sends a card to the staff of the Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem. The card pays homage to the older building's role as predecessor. Shreve & Lamb, the firm hired to design the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company's new headquarters in 1928, completed it in 1929 as a 314-foot, 21-floor Art Deco tower at 51 East 4th Street. Two years later the same firm, now Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, finished the Empire State Building in New York using a strikingly similar program: corporate offices stacked on retail at the base, set back as the building rose, a tower meant to look conservative without ever quite managing it.

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Image: Alexisrael | CC BY-SA 3.0

Reynolds Building: An Effect of Conservatism

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit P. Hughes, CC BY 4.0. The brief from the Reynolds Tobacco Company was specific. Shreve & Lamb were asked for, in the carefully chosen phrase that survives in the project file, "an effect of conservatism along with attractiveness, but to avoid flashiness." A 1997 Winston-Salem Journal article looked ba...

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Image: P. Hughes | CC BY 4.0

Reynolds Building: Tallest in the State

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cbaile19, CC0. When the Reynolds Building was completed for $2.7 million (about $36.3 million in 2016 dollars), it succeeded the Nissen Building, a few blocks away, as the tallest building in North Carolina. It held that title until Winston Tower opened in 1966. There are 21 floors and 313,996 ...

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Image: Cbaile19 | CC0

Reynolds Building: Tobacco Leaves in the Metalwork

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chuck Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0. What R. J. Reynolds money built into the architecture, R. J. Reynolds money also embedded as iconography. Stylized tobacco leaves recur in the grillwork, the elevator doors, and the diamond patterning that runs around the lobby's octagonal hall, clad in St. Genevieve golden-vein ...

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Image: Chuck Allen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Reynolds Building: A Long Pause and a Hotel

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cbaile19, CC0. Reynolds Tobacco eventually moved out, leaving one of downtown Winston-Salem's most important buildings underused. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in August 2014. On November 5, 2015, the Kimpton hotel group announced plans for the Kimpton Card...

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Image: Cbaile19 | CC0

Reynolds Building: The Residences

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cbaile19, CC0. Floors 7 through 19 became The Residences @ the R.J. Reynolds Building. Apartments on the first four of those residential floors number twenty per floor; the upper floors hold six apartments each. About 65 percent are 700 square feet with one bedroom; the rest, at 830 to 1,000 sq...

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Image: Cbaile19 | CC0