The Reynolds Building: Father of the Empire State

There is a story told in Winston-Salem that every year on Father's Day, the management of the Empire State Building in New York sends a card to the management of the Reynolds Building here in town. The card, according to the story, simply says: happy Father's Day.

The Reynolds Building at Fifty-One East Fourth Street opened in April of nineteen twenty-nine. It was designed by the New York firm of Shreve and Lamb in the Art Deco style, a twenty-one-floor limestone tower rising three hundred fourteen feet. When it opened, it was the tallest building between Baltimore and Birmingham. It won a national architecture award.

Two years later, Shreve and Lamb, now joined by partner Arthur Harmon, completed a much larger commission in Manhattan: the Empire State Building. The design lineage from Winston-Salem to New York is not disputed. The setback massing, the vertical stone facing, the tapering tower profile, these elements move directly from the Reynolds Building to the skyscraper that defined an era.

The building was commissioned by Bowman Gray, president of R.J. Reynolds, to serve as the company's corporate headquarters. The lobby was finished in marble from Missouri, Belgium, and France, with gold-leaf ceilings and brass fixtures. The architects were told to convey conservatism along with attractiveness, and to avoid flashiness. The lobby suggests they interpreted those instructions generously.

R.J. Reynolds eventually outgrew the building and moved its operations. The tower sat through decades of downtown decline before being purchased in twenty fourteen and converted into a boutique hotel and apartments. The Empire State Building's architectural parent is now, among other things, a place where visitors can book a room for the night.