Reynolds Building

The story starts before the Empire State Building. When the Reynolds Building opened on April 23, 1929, it was the tallest structure between Baltimore, Birmingham, and Miami — a 314-foot, 21-floor Art Deco tower built as the headquarters of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company for $2.7 million. Winston-Salem, already the Camel City by reputation, had announced itself in steel and stone.

The architects were Shreve & Lamb, who were asked for "an effect of conservatism along with attractiveness, but to avoid flashiness." Whether they succeeded depends on your definition of restraint: gray-brown marble from Missouri, black marble from Belgium, and buff-colored marble from France covered the walls and floor. The ceiling ran to gold leaves. Elevator doors and grillwork came in bright brass. The building won a national architecture award. It also gave Shreve & Lamb — who later added Harmon to the firm name — the template for what became the Empire State Building, completed in 1931.

Local tradition holds that every year the Empire State Building sends the Reynolds Building a Father's Day card in recognition of its role as predecessor. The documented version is more modest: the Empire State Building sent a card on the Reynolds Building's 50th birthday. The legend is better, but the truth is enough.

The building changed hands and eras. Reynolds American put it up for sale in 2009. PMC Property Group and Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants Group bought it for $7.8 million and put roughly $60 million into renovations. By 2016, the lower floors operated as the Kimpton Cardinal Hotel and the upper floors became residential apartments. The lobby — gold and silver leaf ceiling, brass doors, St. Genevieve golden vein marble in the octagonal hall past the elevators — was restored to read the way it did when tobacco money was building the South's skyline.

It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in August 2014. The building is still there, at Fourth and Main, doing what it always did: making clear what this city decided it was.