The Self-Sustaining 10,000 Acre Estate, named 'Devotion', was designed & built by the forward thinking, 'Dick' Reynolds, during midst the great Depression, forging the way for progressive engineering and was a prototype for numerous National Landmarks and Historic Buildings.
During the early 1930’s, Tobacco magnate, “Dick” Reynolds was one of the wealthiest men in America. Reynolds had his hands, and his mind, entrenched in national politics, economics, and business. “Dick” Reynolds, was the acting CEO of; R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, various airlines companies, as well as being the Mayor of Winston Salem, NC. In 1941, Reynolds was elected the, ‘Treasurer of Democratic Party’ under our 32nd President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Dick Reynolds and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s personal friendship had gone back many years, and prior to FDR’s national ‘New Deal’ proposal, “Dick” Reynolds had begun his very own ‘New Deal’ to boost the economy of North Carolina.
“Dick” Reynolds, and wife Elizabeth Dillard Reynolds(“Blitz”), began purchasing large tracts of land located in Surry County, NC. They dreamed of creating a self-sustaining estate spanning over 10,000 acres. The estate would be complete with everything a sophisticated town would have to function as efficiently as a well-greased engine.
The goal was to lift the North Carolina economy far above the economic depression that had swept the nation after the 1929 stock market crash. The plan was to create his own small scale, ‘New Deal, which would create the jobs to put his fellow North Carolinians, as well as countless others worldwide, ‘back to work’ and issue in a new era of prosperity.
“Dick” and his wife, “Blitz’, planned to bring together the culmination of their; knowledge, their philanthropic desires, and their deep love for each other, into an estate to be called, “Devotion”. Reminiscent of their unwavering devotion to all things upstanding and altruistic.
'Dick' & 'Blitz' Reynolds