GLORIOUS RESTORATION
Glorious Restoration
A remade Reynolda landmark is beautiful to behold
By Ross Howell Jr. • Photographs by Amy Freeman
On a steamy August day, I’m driving along leafy Silas Creek Parkway in Winston-Salem, headed for Reynolda, the storied estate that is now part of Wake Forest University.
I’ve been invited to have a look at the top-to-bottom restoration of Reynolda’s gleaming, glass conservatory — the very first structure built on the property — before it opens to the public in October.
I turn at the entrance and pass the retail shops and eateries of Reynolda Village. Facing the parking area is a big sign that announces the impending opening of the “Brown Family Conservatory and Reynolda Welcome Center.” Just beyond the sign, I glimpse the glittering top of the structure formerly known as the palm house and greenhouse.
Work on the restoration has been going on for nearly a year, all made possible by a gift from longtime Reynolda supporters, Malcolm and Patricia Brown, who have three generations of family living in Winston-Salem.
I continue along a narrow drive, past walkers and joggers, and pull into a parking lot near the Reynolda House Museum of American Art. Completed in 1917 as the home of the R.J. Reynolds family, the museum now houses a permanent collection of three centuries of American art and sculpture, along with special rotating exhibitions and extensive online galleries.
I’m greeted at the museum entrance by Brittany Norton, director of marketing and communications. With Norton is the director of archives and library, Bari Helms. Prior to coming to Reynolda, she was an archivist at the Library of Virginia in Richmond. Finally, there’s Phil Archer, deputy director of Reynolda House. A native of Pennsylvania, he attended Wake Forest University for both undergrad and grad school, and has been with Reynolda for more than 20 years.
Helms has put together some materials, so we head for the archives. There, she directs our attention to a large rendering produced by Lord and Burnham, the premier builder of glasshouses in America during the mid-19th and early 20th century.
Helms slides the rendering toward Archer.
“Have you ever seen this?” she asks. “I found it in some boxes.”
Archer shakes his head, touching a finger to the edge of the drawing.
“I don’t think so,” he says. “Not with those perpendicular wings.”
“A little too ‘Versailles’ for Katharine, isn’t it?” Archer asks. He, Helms and Norton exchange knowing smiles.
Helms shows us a letter from a certain “Katharine” to Lord and Burnham, dated May 27, 1912. In it, Katharine details what she wants the conservatory to include — a palm room, a “good-sized” grapery, a tomato section, a large vegetable section, a propagating room and a “nice workroom.”
When Lord and Burnham responded with their plans and perspectives, and their quote for $7,147, Katharine wrote back that it was too much money. The greenhouse additions in the rendering were removed.
“In all her correspondence, you get a sense of how direct, hands-on and detail-oriented Katharine was,” Helms says. I don’t want to show my ignorance by wondering aloud who Katharine is, so I let them go on.
In December 1912, Helms resumes, Katharine wrote a letter to Lord and Burnham, complaining that the workers they’d promised had not yet arrived on site. In January 1913, she wrote again, noting that parts of the conservatory were not being built to her specifications.
“Katharine was very polite about it,” Helms says. “But insisted that she was making Lord and Burnham aware of the issue so they would fix it.”
No doubt they did.
And here I am, still wondering, “Who was Katharine?”
Those of you who know Reynolda just muttered, “Well, bless his heart.”
In my two decades living in Greensboro, until my visit today, I’d been to the estate only once, bumbling around Monkee’s of the Village, a boutique, while my wife, Mary Leigh, picked out a pair of Tory Burch boots.
So, for those of you as benighted as I was, here’s a quick study.
Born in Mount Airy in 1880, Katharine Smith Reynolds was a daughter of America’s Gilded Age and a wife in the Progressive Era of the industrialized New South. In the period photographs at Reynolda, she’s the young woman in the gorgeous outfits who doesn’t seem to be looking at the camera, but, rather, directly into your soul.
To this day, her spirit and determination inform every aspect of Reynolda.
Leaving her home in Mount Airy in 1897 to attend the State Normal and Industrial School — now UNCG — she later withdrew because of a typhoid epidemic and finished her studies at Sullins College in Bristol, Virginia. In 1902, Katharine joined the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in Winston-Salem, where she served as personal secretary to the owner, R.J., a distant cousin who was 30 years her senior. In 1905, Katharine and R.J. married.
Between 1906 and 1911, Katharine gave birth to four children — at grave personal risk, according to her physicians, since she had been plagued with heart problems that started in childhood.
By all accounts, the Reynolds marriage was a happy one, and R.J. was confident in his young wife’s abilities, often consulting her on business matters.
Backed by her husband’s increasing wealth, Katharine began to purchase tracts of land near Winston-Salem. She would eventually acquire more than 1,000 acres, each parcel deeded in her name alone. Her idea was a Progressive one — to create a self-sufficient estate that included a country house, a farm utilizing the latest in technology and agricultural practices, a dairy, recreational facilities and a school.
The Reynolda conservatory was an integral part of Katharine’s design.
OK, class dismissed.
Archer and I leave the archives and head outside. As we approach the conservatory, he points out details — the iron skeleton of the structure, though all the glass and aluminum fittings are new; the foundations, built from fieldstones found on the property; the locations where the electrical lines are buried, hidden, just as they were when the village was being built.
“Katherine wanted the estate to look and feel like an old English hamlet,” Archer says.
“Burying utilities was high-tech for Katharine’s time,” he adds. “But that’s what she wanted.”
At the conservatory, I’m greeted by Jon Roethling, the director of Reynolda Gardens. He joined the estate in 2018, after serving as curator of grounds for the Mariana H. Qubein Botanical Gardens at High Point University. He has served in public horticulture and landscaping for more than 30 years.
Roethling’s been leading the restoration project.
He tells me that the work has been done by Cincinnati-based Rough Brothers (pronounced rauh), now a subsidiary of Prospiant.
“Rough Brothers has access to actual Lord and Burnham plans and molds,” Roethling says.
So, for the Reynolda restoration, the company could use templates on hand, extruding aluminum pieces to match the originals.
The tinted glass needed for the restoration was made by another company. Since it’s so specialized, the company only manufactures it twice a year. That was a big setback to Roethling’s schedule and delayed completion by months.
But the wait was worth it because the unsightly aluminum shutters added to the palm house and greenhouses in a previous renovation could be removed. Moreover, the manufacturer had the equipment to produce curved glass. This meant that the elegant shape of the original architecture — supplanted by the use of flat glass panes in a previous renovation — could be restored.
“When I walk into the palm house now, the architecture just sings,” Roethling says.
And there were the challenges of heating and ventilation — critical to a conservatory.
“We stayed with the original concept of radiant heat,” Roethling explains, “though the new system is very sophisticated.”
Ventilation was a trickier issue, since the conservatory is vented throughout — foundations, walls and roof. From the time the conservatory was built until this restoration, these many vents had to be cranked open or shut by hand.
“You have to strike this balance of having architecture that reflects 1913, but also having the convenience and efficiency of systems that are modern-day,” Roethling says.
“Knowing Katharine, one of the most progressive women of her time, I was sure there was no way she would want us to be hand cranking vents in this day and age,” Roethling continues. “So we made the jump to automated.”
The new system automatically responds to wind flow, wind speed and precipitation, adjusting ventilation as needed. Adjustments can also be made remotely, using Wi-Fi.
Recently, when Roethling noticed a thunderstorm developing nearby, he went to the conservatory to see how the system would respond.
“As the wind rose and the storm started rolling through, I watched the vents immediately close a bit,” he says. “When the wind grew stronger, the vents shut completely, protecting the greenhouses.”
We take a quick look at the welcome center, which is adjacent to the conservatory. It will be the orientation point for the facility. There are cabinet doors still to be hung and counters to be finished. In the future it will include plants, Reynolda-branded merchandise and historical information.
Leaving the welcome center, we step into the high-ceilinged palm room. The new tinted glass is working. While the area is warm, it’s not nearly as hot as I thought it would be on this sweltering summer day.
Walking outdoors to the open area in front of the conservatory, we have a full view of the central structure and greenhouses flanking it. The span, end-to-end, is more than 300 feet.
Sod has been laid the entire length. This will be a walking path for visitors. Between the edge of the sod and the foundations of the greenhouses are newly prepared planting beds, about 8 feet wide.
Roethling tells me that Reynolda has long been recognized for its peonies.
“The problem is, once the peonies bloomed out, that was pretty much it, visually,” he says.
With the restoration ongoing, Roethling wanted to do something significant about the peony beds.
“I needed someone who could do something amazing,” he says.
Roethling reached out to Jenks Farmer, a plantsman in Columbia, S.C. A published horticultural writer, Farmer served as director of Riverbanks Botanical Garden in West Columbia and was the founding horticulturist of Moore Farms Botanical Gardens in Lake City, both in South Carolina.
Farmer created a design for the peony beds incorporating other perennials that will provide visual interest throughout the growing season.
“Jenks is great,” Roethling says. “He loves balancing history with what’s relevant today. When he gets up here in a few days, we’ll lay out the beds and throw a team at them to get all the plants in the ground.”
Roethling smiles.
“It’s been a little bit like a three-ring circus,” he says. “I’ll breathe a sigh of relief when we open in October.”
Now he directs my attention to the conservatory.
“Each bay will have a different theme,” Roethling says. “This first bay will be in the spirit of an orangerie, which represents the birth of greenhouses.” (For the uninitiated, an “orangerie” is just what it sounds like, a greenhouse where orange trees are grown). He explains that it will be filled with citrus trees, much like the original 17th-century orangeries in England and throughout Europe. The bay will also feature olive trees and other fruiting plants and will be used to illustrate a narrative history of the development of greenhouse structures over the centuries.
The next bay will be an arid greenhouse, featuring the five Mediterranean climates of the world — Southern California, the Mediterranean Basin, South Australia, South Africa’s cape area and central Chile.
“This will be a fun thing to educate kids,” Roethling says. “To explore with them how the plant palette changes, how the plants adapt.”
The central palm house will be elegant in its features. In big containers, there will be sealing wax palms with their deep red canes and tall Bismarck palms with their silver fronds.
“There will be a lot of texture — greens, whites and silvers,” Roethling adds. Visitors will be able to compare the broad texture of a palm frond to, say, the fine texture of a fern.
The next greenhouse bay will feature bromeliads, orchids and other flora that thrive in the tropics. And it will be about color — abundant, dramatic color. Listening to Roethling talk about this greenhouse, you hear his self-professed “plant geek” revealed.
“In here, I want to have freaky things that visitors walk up to and ask, ‘What is that?’” He smiles broadly.
The final bay will serve as a holding house for orchids that are resting. The plants will be organized by types, with interpretative signage.
“Even though the orchids won’t be in bloom there,” Roethling says, “that greenhouse will still be beautiful and educational.”
Just as Katharine would have expected.