Enjoy Reynolda House by Candlelight
For the first time, Reynolda House Museum of American Art in Winston-Salem is offering holiday candlelight tours of the historic property built by Katharine Smith Reynolds and her husband Richard Joshua Reynolds, founder of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.
“There were so many Christmas stories and letters in our archives that it became clear that this holiday was central to the Reynolds family’s lives as well as their social and entertaining lives,” says Phil Archer, director of public programs for Reynolda House. The property will welcome visitors the way they would have been welcomed during a visit in 1917, an important year not in world history but for members of the Reynolds family, who were just moving into their new home and celebrating Christmas together for the first time.
“We’re going to read from lots of letters written that year, explore the house and point out certain items that we know were Christmas gifts,” Archer says. “We’ll hear the house’s Aeolian pipe organ playing Christmas carols. The dining room table will be set for dessert, and we’ll have refreshments drawn from those menus. We’ll also have the children’s dollhouse from the 1930s, a bunch of their Christmas cards and ten fireplaces decorated for the holidays.”
From Dec. 10–12 there will be three candlelight tours of Reynolda House each day at 4:30, 5:30 and 6:30 p.m., with as many as eight groups of no more than ten participants. For more information, call (336) 758-5150.
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