Graylyn

• 1. Introduction

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  Graylyn Estate stands in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, built in the Norman Revival style. On the 20th of June 1980, a fire broke out inside the house while the Winston-Salem Symphony performed on the lawn outside. Nearly 7,000 people watched as the flames damaged the interior. Yet the estate now welcomes guests as a conference center and hotel. How did a family's private dream house end up drawing a crowd like that? What turned it from a mansion into a place where strangers now book rooms? The story starts with the people who built it, long before that night in 1980.

• 2. A Dream In Stone

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  In 1925, Nathalie Lyons Gray and her husband Bowman Gray Sr. bought an 87-acre estate from R. J. Reynolds. Bowman Gray Sr. was chairman of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company at the time. The couple planned to build what they called "the home of their dreams." The land had once been corn fields and pasture belonging to the Reynolda Estate, an area now known as the Reynolda Historic District.

  To raise what would become one of North Carolina's largest private homes, the Grays brought in artisans and craftsmen from across the United States. Groundbreaking took place on the 15th of January 1928. As many as 136 people worked on the construction at one time. The mansion was built in the Norman style and contained about 60 rooms. At the time, it ranked second in size only to George Vanderbilt's Biltmore Estate in Asheville, among the state's private homes.

  Once the frame stood, the Grays turned toward specialists who could give the interior its character.

• 3. Ironwork And Interiors

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  Joseph Barton Benson, an ironsmith from Philadelphia, designed the ironwork found throughout the property. Nathalie Gray took charge of decorating the rooms herself, choosing the furnishings and finishes throughout the house. The grounds and gardens were laid out by a landscape designer named Thomas Warren Sears.

  Its telephone system and floodlight system were called "at the cutting end of technology for the 1930s." The amenities throughout the house were considered lavish for the era.

  Those systems marked Graylyn as a showcase in its own decade, well before the house would take on entirely different roles.

• 4. A Change Of Purpose

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  In 1946, Nathalie Gray and her sons donated the estate to the Bowman Gray School of Medicine. From 1947 to 1959, Graylyn operated as a psychiatric hospital.

  Gordon Gray, one of Nathalie and Bowman Gray's sons, bought the estate back in 1972 and donated it to Wake Forest University. In the years that followed, the university put Graylyn to use for campus programs and community service. From 1977 to 1980, the house served as a dormitory, housing about 40 students a year.

  The dormitory years lasted until 1980, when Graylyn's history took a sudden and destructive turn.

• 5. Rebuilding Graylyn

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  James R. Scales, president of Wake Forest University at the time, announced the very next day that Graylyn would be rebuilt. Scales committed the university to restoring the mansion to its appearance in 1932. Restoration of the mansion and Bernard Cottage wrapped up in 1984, at a cost of $6,000,000.

  That six-million-dollar rebuild set the stage for Graylyn's next chapter.

• 6. Graylyn Today

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  Today the estate holds 85 guest rooms and fifteen meeting rooms. Guests can stay across five separate buildings: the Manor House, the Mews, Bernard Cottage, Gardener's Cottage and the Bungalows.

  A garage-guest house and a "farm" complex round out the estate's contributing outbuildings. The estate earned a listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Graylyn now holds membership in Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.