A World of Her Own Making - 9781558495203

It was only a few years after marrying tobacco magnate R. J. Reynolds that young Katharine Smith Reynolds (1880-1924) began to plan a new home for her family. Not many young women of the day found themselves with almost unlimited wealth to construct their dream home, but Katharine's sense of purpose for her vast resources was even more unusual. She envisioned the founding of a model community that would emphasize health, modern technology, mixed-crop scientific farming, education, and rural beauty.
In 1904, when Katharine embarked on her estate project in Winston (now Winston-Salem), North Carolina, the South was still feeling the effects of the Civil War and a century of single-crop farming. After exhaustive research, which included reading in agricultural journals and trips to other American estates and model farms, she began to lay out her property, Reynolda. Her plan was inspired, in part, by the rural landscapes of England that had captured the imagination of Frederick Law Olmsted.
A welcoming bungalow for her family was surrounded by a landscaped park, set amid farm fields and pastures, with a village of homes and gardens, a church, and a school for farm employees' children. Beginning in 1915, Katharine was aided by Thomas W. Sears, a Philadelphia-based landscape architect. The estate eventually expanded to cover more than 1,000 acres.
Illustrated with 150 photographs, plans, and drawings, Catherine Howett's engaging study analyzes the singular convergence of influences that occurred in the imagination of a highly unusual woman. The book provides welcome insight into the culture of the New South and into a richly inventive period in the history of American landscape architecture.