Reynolds Archives

Reynolds Archives contains archival items from both Reynolds Homestead and Reynolda House Museum of American Art.

The Reynolds Homestead was built in 1843 as the Rock Spring Plantation in Critz, Virginia, by Hardin Reynolds, a successful farmer, merchant, banker, and tobacco manufacturer. Hardin and Nancy Cox Reynolds’s son, Richard Joshua (R.J.), founded the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and their grandson, Richard Samuel, Sr., founded Reynolds Metals. The Reynolds Homestead has been designated a State and National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Registry of American Homes.

Richard Joshua “R.J.” Reynolds (1850-1918), founder of the Reynolds Tobacco Company, married Katharine Smith in 1905. Shortly afterwards, the couple constructed the Reynolda House on a plot of 1,000 acres of purchased land, moving from Critz, Virginia to Winston-Salem, North Carolina upon its completion in 1917. Starting construction in 1912, Katharine Smith Reynolds contracted and assisted Charles Barton Keene, a Philadelphia-based architect in designing the house and the surrounding farm buildings. Landscaping of the area, including gardens, farms, and creation of a 16-acre artificial lake was initially drafted by New York landscape designers Buckenham & Miller and completed by Philadelphian landscape architect Thomas W. Sears, who replaced them. Today, the Reynolda House is a museum for American art ranging from the colonial period to the present day.