Reynolda House

Reynolda House Museum of American Art is where the story of the tobacco fortune turns into the story of the city. Completed in 1917, the house was built as the country home of Katharine Smith Reynolds and her husband R.J. Reynolds, founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. It has 64 rooms, and its interiors, preserved with period furnishings and artifacts, give a glimpse of life on one of the South's great estates. The house also serves as an art museum, with a collection of American paintings that ranges across several centuries, so you can move between the intimate details of a family home and the broader sweep of American art within the same visit. The estate itself was designed as a self-sufficient working village, and the grounds are central to the experience. Reynolda was conceived by Katharine Reynolds as a model farm estate with gardens, a lake, farm buildings and a village of homes for staff. Today the estate covers some 170 acres. Reynolda Gardens, the formal gardens, is free and open daily, and Reynolda Village, the former farm outbuildings, houses shops and restaurants. The house, the gardens and the village together form one of the most complete and rewarding sites in the city, and visiting all three is easily a half-day. Katharine Reynolds is the story's most interesting figure. She was an unusually engaged client, shaping the design of the house and landscape, running the estate with progressive ideas about housing, schooling and health care for staff, and creating a home that was also a showpiece. Her later life, with a second marriage and the family's mid-century donation of land for Wake Forest University's move to Winston-Salem, adds further chapters. A visit helps to explain why the university campus, the gardens and the museum sit side by side.

Plan your visit by checking what is open. Museums go through rotating exhibitions and periodic conservation work, and parts of the house have been closed for renovation in recent years, so check the current visitor information before you set off and confirm opening days. Reynolda House is generally closed on Mondays, in line with many museums, and typical visits last about ninety minutes inside, with extra time for the gardens and village. Tours range from guided house tours to self-guided exploration, and the museum often has temporary exhibitions that complement the permanent collection.

The art collection rewards art lovers and casual visitors alike. American painting from the colonial era to the present is represented, and the museum has built a reputation for thoughtful interpretation that links the artworks to the house, the family and wider American history. Pay attention to how the house is arranged: bedrooms, a sleeping porch, a living room with a pipe organ and a bowling alley in the basement give a vivid sense of how this family lived and entertained.

The setting is designed to be lived in, not stuffy, and visitors often comment on how comfortable it feels compared with more formal mansion museums.

After the house, step outside. The gardens offer formal beds, wooded trails and a greenhouse that is especially pleasant in colder months, and the village offers a place for lunch or a doughnut. Wake Forest University's campus adjoins the estate, so a stroll can extend past the quad. Combine the visit with a trolley tour, which stops in the area, or with an evening in the Arts District.

Reynolda suits couples, culture-minded travelers, garden lovers and families with older children, and it is the best place in the city to see how wealth, art and landscape worked together in the early twentieth century.