The Waters of Reynolda

By Clark Harper
April 1, 2024

Katharine Reynolds was a stickler for a healthy environment. Her overarching goal for Reynolda was neither to show off her family’s wealth nor to isolate the family from their community. She had the state pave the dirt road from West Fourth Street to her home. The estate would include gardens for the enjoyment of all, a church that she would gift to the congregation, and a school to educate her children, her workers’ children, and others in the region. Having been ill at different points in her youth, she wanted Reynolda to be a healthy place for her family and others to live, play, worship, and learn.

We can assume that she must have been delighted to find the land was plentiful with underground aquifers that would provide 30,000 gallons a day of fresh artesian well water for the house, the cottages in the village, and even the outdoor swimming pool! Finding a spring should have been no surprise. The Moravians, who settled in Salem over 150 years before the building of Reynolda, chose the location for its abundance of nearby springs and creeks. Spring Street in downtown Winston was named after the springs that initially provided piped water to Salem, impressing George Washington on his 1791 visit. A pump house at the outdoor pool took care of Reynolda’s plumbing infrastructure.

Silas Creek also ran through the land. One of Katharine’s first projects was excavating about a 16-acre swath in the creek bed to dam up and create Lake Katharine. While the lake is now a wetland, its Boathouse reminds us of what it once was. The lake provided a place of recreation: fishing, boating, and outdoor enjoyment. More importantly, though, it provided water for irrigation of the lawns, flower beds, and formal gardens. A second pump house near the pool pumped lake water up to a cistern, the cement structure now seen at the corner of Reynolda Road and Coliseum Drive. The cistern distributed the irrigation water. Thousands of fieldstones unearthed during the lake project would skirt the foundations of the bungalow and village buildings and were used in the dam and chimneys. The lake was a backdrop for events like the Fourth of July picnic that R.J. Reynolds had for his sales associates and their wives in 1916. In 1921, Reynolda School staged a production of Hiawatha performed by children from the Gray, Hanes, and Reynolds families.

In addition to the hundreds of faucets throughout the house and other buildings, Katharine used water for heating, air purification, and cooling. The steam heating plant at the far end of the village used to have a 125-foot smokestack. Inside, boilers in two coal-fired furnaces produced the steam for heating and conveyed it to the house and other village buildings via underground tunnels. A Webster Air Washer in the basement used forced air filtered through a spray chamber to create a mist of atomized water and sent the “washed” air into five first-floor rooms of the house.

The evaporative air was also designed to cool the house but was found to be inefficient due to the humidity it produced. Other forms of air conditioning would later take its place. When the Babcocks acquired the house in the 1930s, they installed large cooling compressors in the basement below the new indoor swimming pool. The compressors created a lot of heat, requiring ice blocks to help cool things down. Charlie Babcock cleverly used one problem to solve another. He had planned to fill the new pool with the abundant supply of artesian well water. However, the water was rather chilly for swimming—55 degrees Fahrenheit! Before the water entered the pool, he had it routed around the compressors to absorb the heat, providing warm water.

Water is a precious resource, and Katharine Reynolds had the foresight to harness it. The Boathouse and the outdoor pool remind us of the recreational use of some of the water. The tunnels, the power plant, and the cooling and heating facilities remind us of Katharine’s ability to be practical with details while she was dreaming big. 

Imagine taking Katharine through the house and grounds today.  I hope she would be pleased with how subsequent generations have been good stewards of the land and water.