Reynolda House, Museum of American Art
The Reynolda House Museum of American Art
showcases a premiere collection of American artworks that span
the colonial period to the current day in a magnificent house
that was constructed in 1917 by Katherine Smith Reynolds and her
husband, R. J. Reynolds, founder of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco
Company. The house originally occupied the center of a 1067 acre
estate that would open as a public museum dedicated to the arts
and education in 1965, and then as an art museum in 1967. The
home possesses one of the best collections of American paintings
in the country, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The estate
would be the home of two generations of the Reynolds family,
with the oldest daughter, Mary Reynolds Babcock acquiring the
estate in 1935, and she and her husband, Charles Babcock would
use the house as a vacation home until 1948, when they would
move into the house permanently. It would stay in the family for
another half a century; of which the museum has renovated to its
former pristine condition that reflects the period the families
would live there. The estate is found on Reynolda Road, and a
big part of it can be explored on foot, and besides the house,
there are 28 of the original thirty building still standing. On
the west side of the house, the restored formal gardens are
located, and well known for their Japanese cryptomeria and
weeping cherry trees, with a sixteen acre lake out behind the
house. It, Lake Katherine, has been allowed to revert back to
wetlands, that offer a variety of wildlife, with many of the
buildings in the village now occupied by restaurants, boutiques
and shops. If you were to take a short walk across the dam, it
would lead you right onto the property of Wake Forest
University, that had been constructed on property that had been
donated from the Reynolda to the university by Mary and Charles
Babcock. There was a lovely French restaurant that was set up in
the family's former boiler room, but it was closed down in the
1990s.
|
