Sources

R.J. Reynolds' Tobacco Sheds 123 and 157
Winston-Salem, NC
Circa 1923 and 1928
(Building Certification #1.005)

To many, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and Winston-Salem, NC, are synonymous. Indeed, it is no surprise that Winston-Salem is known as “Camel City,�? a reference to the company's preeminent cigarette brand. R.J. Reynolds' influence marks every corner—parks, museums, schools and streets bear the Reynolds name. The Reynolds family and their generous donation of land are even the reason behind Wake Forest University's move to Winston-Salem in 1956. Without a doubt, R.J. Reynolds and Winston-Salem have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship for more than a century, and it all began with an industrious man whose entrepreneurial spirit led to the creation of a thriving tobacco empire.

Richard Joshua Reynolds, born in 1850, was raised on a plantation in present-day Critz, VA. Reynolds' familiarity with tobacco went back to his childhood when his father, Hardin, made a living by selling chewing tobacco. Reynolds worked for his father for a while, peddling the tobacco product through the mountains of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky with uncertain success. He decided that although the product had potential, he needed a more effective way to distribute it. Critz did not have a railroad, which was an asset Reynolds decided would be crucial to his success.

In his early 20s, Reynolds traveled 60 miles to Winston, NC, a sleepy town with a mere 500 residents. Winston's economy had been sluggish ever since the Civil War. Cotton and dried berries were the town's main offerings before tobacco's dominance eventually brought thousands of jobs to the area. However, Winston boasted the recently built Northwest North Carolina Railroad (later called Southern Railway) that connected to nearby Greensboro, NC. Even better, Winston offered prime conditions for creating chewing tobacco, with its silty soil and an innovative flue-curing process.

In 1875, Reynolds bought a small lot—no larger than a tennis court—next to the railroad tracks and constructed a two-story building known as the “Little Red Factory.�? This small structure, plus 12 seasonal employees, marked the beginning of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. The company had a slow start, but the demand for its products was steady and growing. Reynolds was known for being a keen businessman, someone with an acute awareness of public taste. Unafraid to abandon industry traditions, Reynolds and his company introduced several products that revolutionized the tobacco industry.

In 1913, the town of Winston joined with Salem, a neighboring Moravian community, to form Winston-Salem. That year also marked a significant change for R.J. Reynolds with its introduction of Camel cigarettes, which propelled the company to the forefront of the tobacco industry. Camel was the first modern-type, “American blend�?, packaged cigarette as well as the first national cigarette brand with coast-to-coast consumer appeal.

Due to increased demand and production, R.J. Reynolds needed more places to store the tobacco leaves while they dried and matured. In 1921, the company began building a number of sheds to meet this need. Collectively, these buildings became known as “Tiretown�? because of their close proximity to a well-known tire manufacturing plant. A few years later, as the rest of the country suffered from the great stock market crash of 1929, R.J. Reynolds continued to flourish, erecting its 22-story headquarters in downtown Winston-Salem, the first skyscraper of the South.

In November 1944, because of the slim workforce caused by World War II, R.J. Reynolds arranged for 200 German POWs to work in its leaf houses. As the story goes, the prisoners were treated well and were allowed appropriate free time to become acquainted with the local community before returning to Germany following the end of the war. During the war, R.J. Reynolds provided Camels to American soldiers overseas, as well as to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was famously a fan of Camel cigarettes.

The post-war years marked even more expansion for the company, fueled by the introduction of a filter cigarette, Winston, in 1954, and a menthol-filter cigarette, Salem, in 1956. One of the company's largest expansion efforts occurred in 1961 with the opening of its Whitaker Park complex, which combined the Tiretown storage sheds with new manufacturing plants.

Today, R.J. Reynolds is the second-largest tobacco company in the United States. Like many tobacco companies, it has declining need for the ample storage facilities of the past. In an effort to responsibly reuse the materials from these old tobacco sheds, R.J. Reynolds and Turning House Millworks worked together to carefully deconstruct two of Whitaker Park's storage units that are no longer in use, sheds numbered 123 and 157.

These two tobacco sheds were built in 1923 and 1928, respectively, and were used to age flue-cured, sun-cured, Burley, and Turkish leaf tobaccos. The southern long leaf pine, oak and sugar maple that made up their floors and beams have been recycled into some of Turning House's first furniture and flooring products. The two sheds provided about 230,000 board feet of lumber and therefore saved approximately 1,403 trees (92 acres of full-growth forest). It's only fitting that a company with a rich history of growth through innovation would now expand its legacy into this innovative venture—preserving the storied past of buildings that were once an integral part of a booming international industry and Piedmont culture.

Sources: A Short History of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (1965); The RJR Story by J. Paul Sticht (1984); Winston-Salem: A History by Frank Tursi (1994); The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company by Nannie M. Tilley (1984); “History of Sheds at Whitaker Park�? provided by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (2009); “Who We Are,�? R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, www.rjrt.com; “Pilgrim's Progress,�? Wake Forest Magazine (2006), www.wfu.edu/magazine.