The tower & the glory: at the ripe old age of 134, Reynolds Tobacco is leaving home--the Winston-Salem landmark it has inhabited for 80 years.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: PICTURE THIS

It is their bond, the wisp of smoke from the cigarette between her slender fingers. She's the classic Art Deco woman, fashionably languid, bare of shoulder, peering into the eyes of her Valentino man in his tux and oiled hair. Through the magic of the muralist, the wisp wafts to the next frame where two men linger over a pitcher of cool drink. Behind them, a farmer guides his brace of mules across rolling fields. They are men of the South from an era when tobacco was king, and this 22-story structure where artist Dennis Abbe's tapestry hangs was its palace. Now tobacco is leaving Winston-Salem's Reynolds Building, though not going far.

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Reynolds American Inc. spokeswoman Maura Payne says the company has outgrown the building it has occupied since 1929 and is moving next door to Reynolds Plaza, where there's nearly twice as much space as in the 239,781-square-foot Reynolds Building. The old building's future is uncertain--the local tax collector values it at about $12 million--but speculation points to high-end condominiums. If so, occupants will live not only in luxury but an icon.

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"Architecturally, the Reynolds Building defined not only the tobacco industry but the city of Winston-Salem," says historian John Larson, vice president for restoration of Old Salem Inc., the city's restored 1700s Moravian village. "If s like a lighthouse in the middle of town, one of those navigational buildings that people use to judge where they are." The city's soul might be Old Salem, but its industrial and commercial heart has been the Reynolds Building. And this heart pulses with architectural and artistic passion.

Clad in Indiana limestone and rising 380 feet above the street, the Reynolds Building, at the time the tallest building south of Baltimore, was completed in only 13 months. The tobacco company that Richard Joshua Reynolds had founded 54 years earlier occupied it in April 1929, six months before the onset of the Great Depression. From here, in 1958 the company became the nation's biggest cigarette maker. It held the distinction until 1983, though by then it had diversified and become RJR Nabisco, a global conglomerate. In 1999, the cigarette maker reverted to...