The first half of 2019 was the most North Carolina-y of my life. Between January and the 4th of July, I visited the state on 5 separate occasions, all to different destinations. This is the second thread of what will be a multi-part series. The
first thread was Durham.
Here's Winston-Salem
Winston-Salem is another one of these mid-size NC cities.
Like clockwork, I go to Winston-Salem every 5 years. Each time I spend an afternoon walking around downtown, which gets better every time. The downside of this arrangement is that I don't take the same pictures every time, and my basic get-to-know-the-city pictures are from my first visit, in 2009. They're low-res and not really worth posting (you can see them
on Flickr if you want). So the pictures you'll get here are not necessarily a completely representative tour. But hopefully they're nice anyway.
The epiphany I had about Winston-Salem on this most recent trip, is that it's kind of the ideal car-oriented city. It's old and big enough to have some interesting urbanity (unlike more suburban places), but it's small enough that there's no traffic and you can drive anywhere in 20 minutes. It's easy to understand how 20th Century city planners would look at a place like this and think cars in cities made a lot of sense. Scale the place up to Charlotte size and that breaks down, but with only a few hundred thousand people in the urbanized area, it's pretty convenient.
Here's the skyline. It's kind of amusing to me that there's basically one large building from every major skyscraper architectural era. The white post-modern building with the dome is the tallest, at 460 feet.
The skyscrapers mostly cluster in the southern end of downtown, which ends up being pretty office-park-esque. The largest buildings take up an entire block, and many are surrounded by landscaping.
The northern end of downtown is more walkable & interesting. 4th Street and Trade Street are nice retail main streets. Trade in particular is an arts district with a lot of indie art stores.
This is the corner of Trade & 4th:
6th & Trade:
There's even bikeshare:
Right near the center of downtown there's a nice central bus station. I have no idea about the quality of bus service, but the station is good. Better than a lot of cities twice this size.
Sadly there are no trains to Winston-Salem. North Carolina's state-supported Amtrak line goes from Raleigh to Greensboro to Charlotte, but bypasses Winston-Salem in order to reach Charlotte faster. I really think there should at least be a spur to Winston-Salem. The tracks are there, and a nice station building. Unfortunately the station is a mile or so outside downtown, so maybe that contributes to not providing trains.
Here's the station. The photo is from 2014 when a renovation was just beginning. It's
about to re-open, but still won't have trains. When I'm there again in 2024 I'll have to check it out.
On the outskirts of downtown there are a lot of old brick warehouses, from Winston's more industrial past. This is actually the back of the train station, but you get the idea.
A mile or so south of downtown lies Old Salem. "Winston-Salem" used to be two cities, Winston and Salem. Downtown is where Winston was centered, and Old Salem is where Salem was centered.
Old Salem is centered around a little town square. On the south side of the square it's a living history museum, kind of like Colonial Williamsburg. The bigger buildings on the north side are Salem College, the oldest women's college in the US that's still a women's college. It's very picturesque.
A few miles northwest of downtown lies Wake Forest University. I've never stopped there. Just off campus, however, is Reynolda Garden and Village. Named for the
Reynolds family of cigarette fortune, Reynolda is the Versailles (or Biltmore) of Winston-Salem: A nice formal garden from the historic monied class, now open to the public.
Reynolda Village dates from the 1910s and has cute shops and cafes. I'm not sure whether it was originally working out-buildings from the Reynolda house & garden, or whether it was always built as a sort of tourist village. It's cute.
That's pretty much it for pictures. As a parting shot, I'll leave you with this one from a dinner party outside town at a -- wait for it -- llama farm.
Thanks for reading!