photography by DEBORAH KOERNER PHOTOGRAPHY
Winston-Salem is sometimes called “Camel City” due to its important role in the tobacco industry and Reynold’s legendary “Camel” cigarette. Although Pleasant Hanes was the first to build a tobacco factory, R.J. Reynolds built the second tobacco factory here in 1875 (Hanes later moved on to the textile business and sold his tobacco company in 1900).
Of great significance to this industry was the first cigarette-making machine, introduced in 1880. A little later, funded by four area businessmen, engineer and machinist William Cyrus Briggs began to make his own version of a cigarette machine in Winston Salem and eventually formed Briggs-Shaffner to manufacture a companion cigarette packing machine. Cigarettes were slow to catch on with the public, but when they did, the cigarette significantly altered the tobacco business.
Going back a little further, in the mid-1800s, many Forsyth County farmers grew at least some tobacco as one of several cash crops. This was the same in many of the surrounding counties. The son of a tobacco farmer in Virginia, Richard Joshua “R.J.” Reynolds sold his shares of his father’s company and ventured to the nearest town with a railroad connection – Winston-Salem – with a plan to start his own tobacco company. By 1914, Camels were the most popular cigarette in the world! This helped make Winston-Salem the largest city in North Carolina for several decades. At the beginning of the 1900s, Reynolds bought most of the competing tobacco factories in Winston-Salem.
In the old days, many factory workers lived a few blocks away from R.J. Reynolds factory in an area called Reynoldstown. This was a neighborhood originally created for tobacco company employees. Reynolds paid his employees well. The high school-aged kids would often work there during the summers and, when they graduated, they would get their first full-time job at Reynolds alongside their parents.
At the time Reynolds died in 1918 (of pancreatic cancer), his company owned 121 buildings in Winston-Salem. He was so fundamental to company operations that executives did not hang another chief executive’s portrait next to his in the company board room for 41 years. Reynolds’ brother, William Neal Reynolds, took over following Reynolds’ death, and six years later, Bowman Gray became chief executive. By that time, Reynolds Co. was the top taxpayer in the state of North Carolina and was one of the most profitable corporations in the world.
Although new information about tobacco use and subsequent lower demand have minimized the business in the 21st century, tobacco has always been a profitable trade. Those profits have affected nearly every aspect of life in Forsyth County, from hospitals and schools to charities and the arts. It’s a legacy that will be well remembered.
Today, the Winston-Salem Tobacco Historic District is a national historic district. It encompasses 20 buildings and 16 structures across about 31 acres in a predominantly industrial section of Winston-Salem. The buildings date from about 1890 to 1959, and include buildings relating to the tobacco industry, specifically R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.
The iconic, 130-foot tall R.J. Reynolds smokestack – built in 1949 – watches over what is now Innovation Quarter. The area includes 330-acres and describes itself as “one of the country’s leading innovation districts that has successfully fostered an innovation ecosystem allowing startups, growth companies, research and education to live, work, play and thrive.”
The idea of a research park in Winston-Salem was a community-wide effort that began in the early 1990s in the aftermath of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company closing many of its former downtown warehouse and manufacturing buildings. Wake Forest School of Medicine’s Department of Physiology and Pharmacology moved into one former Reynolds warehouse in 1993, along with eight researchers from Winston-Salem State University. Civic committees and discussion led to a master plan being announced in 2002 for what would ultimately become today’s Innovation Quarter.
Winston-Salem’s long-standing culture of innovation has existed since the Moravians settled here. It continued with the manufacturing boom in the early 20th century, as shown by the tremendous growth of companies like R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Hanesbrands. As Winston-Salem transitioned from “Camel City” to “the City of Arts and Innovation” at the end of the 20th century, the focus on innovation changed from tobacco to technology.
Plans continued at Innovation Quarter as Wake Forest School of Medicine moved downtown. Developers included the footprint of Winston-Salem’s tobacco industry into the design so what was a vibrant, prosperous downtown for so long, so many years ago could continue to thrive and inspire for generations to come.
