Reynolds Building

The 22-storey Reynolds Building was the tallest skyscraper in the South when it opened in 1929 and is one of the great Art Deco towers in the United States. The lobby — bronze elevators, marble floors, a coffered ceiling — is open during business hours and worth the detour. The exterior, with its limestone setbacks and the stylised tobacco-leaf motif at the entrance, is the single best piece of architecture in downtown Winston-Salem.

The building has been converted to a hotel (the Kimpton Cardinal) so you can also have a drink in the basement bar, which preserves the original recreation room with bowling lanes and an indoor pool used by Reynolds Tobacco employees in the 1930s.

things to do sight architecture
A story
The Reynolds Building was the prototype for the Empire State Building — when New York's tallest skyscraper went up in 1930 the architects sent a congratulatory telegram to their colleagues at Shreve & Lamb in Winston-Salem, who had finished essentially the same Art Deco design four years earlier.