Graylyn Estate Collection
The Graylyn Estate was originally the home of Bowman Gray, Senior, and Nathalie Lyons Gray. The Graylyn Estate collection contains information about the planning, construction, and functioning of the buildings and grounds of Graylyn. Materials include blueprints, photographs and negatives of decor, design, interiors and exteriors, receipts for building materials and labor, architectural plans of Luther Lashmit, correspondence with architects and builders, oral histories about the estate on audio and video cassettes, research notes from Thomas Gray, landscape designs from Thomas Sears, and materials collected about the estate and related people by longtime Wake Forest University history professor J. Edwin Hendricks. The collection also documents the fire that destroyed part of the estate in the 1980s and its rebuilding.
Biographical and Historical Note
The original Graylyn Estate was the home of Bowman Gray, Senior (1874-1935), Nathalie Lyons Gray (1884-1961), and their two sons, Bowman Junior and Gordon. Bowman Gray, a son of the founder of Wachovia Bank and Trust Co., started work as a salesperson for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and by the time the home was built had risen to Chairman of the Board. In the 1920s, businessmen began building grand countryside estates for their families. In 1925, Nathalie Lyons Gray purchased 87 acres of pasture land and cornfields and set out to build her dream home.
Construction began on July 1, 1927, on a garage that was converted to a guest cottage and temporary home for the Grays during building. Groundbreaking for the new house was January 15, 1928, Bowman Junior's 21st birthday. As many as 136 people worked on construction of the estate at one time. The Grays moved into the completed house in 1932. With nearly 60 rooms and 46,00 square feet, Graylyn was one of the largest private homes in North Carolina.
In 1935, Bowman Gray, Senior died on shipboard in the North Atlantic Ocean while vacationing with his family. In 1946, Mrs. Gray and her sons gave the estate to Wake Forest University's Bowman Gray School of Medicine. The site served as an academic psychiatric hospital facility until 1959. In the 1950s, Gordon Gray was installed as the president of the University of North Carolina system. Mrs. Nathalie Gray Bernard, who had been living in Bernard Cottage, a guest residence on the estate, died in 1961. Gordon Gray was appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board by President John F. Kennedy in the same year.
In 1972, Gordon Gray purchased Graylyn Estate back from the medical school and donated it to Wake Forest University. Over time, the estate had many uses, but mainly housed university programs and students. On June 22, 1980, a fire ignited on the third floor of the Manor House during a performance on the lawn by the Winston-Salem Symphony. An audience of 7,000 watched as the top floors of the unoccupied house burned. The following day, University president James R. Scales announced that the home would be restored to its original 1932 condition and used as an educational conference center. Thomas Alexander Gray was the preservation consultant for the restoration.
On January 1, 1984, the restoration led by architect Edwin Bouldin, Jr. was completed. The house, once valued at $1.6 million in 1930, was now valued at over $15 million. Wake Forest University maintained ownership of Graylyn throughout the nineties, but the conference center was managed by Marriott Management Services until December 18, 1993. In 1993, Graylyn became an international Conference Center and began hosting individuals and organizations from all over the world, including former presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. On July 1, 2001, Wake Forest University assumed management responsibilities. Since then, the property has undergone extensive operational, technological, and cosmetic renovations.
Source: "Graylyn." Graylyn International Conference Center, http://www.graylyn.com
Collection Overview
The records consist of architectural plans and drawings, financial and legal documents, a thesis, research files, and photographs, chiefly compiled and collected by Thomas A. Gray, relating to the Gray family property in Winston-Salem, N.C. Materials include blueprints, photographs and negatives of decor, design, interiors and exteriors, correspondence with vendors (1927-1930), receipts for building materials and labor, architectural plans of Luther Lashmit, correspondence with architects and builders including Northup and O'Brien, oral histories about the estate, research notes from Thomas Gray, whose family owned the estate, and landscape designs from Thomas W. Sears, and materials collected about the estate and related people by longtime Wake Forest University history professor J. Edwin Hendricks. The collection also documents the fire that destroyed part of the estate in the 1980s and its rebuilding. A few audiocassettes contain interviews with family members and preservationists and others conducted by Julia C. Parke for her thesis regarding Gordon Gray.
Due to preservation issues, some correspondence with construction-related companies was heavily sampled; the remaining correspondence has been cleaned as possible.
Collection Arrangement
The Grayly Estate Collection is arranged in eight series: Architects' Plans and Drawings, Articles, Financial and Legal Documents, Historical Files, Pictorial Materials, Tom Gray Research Materials, Subject Files, and Vendors Files. Arrangement and description was completed first in 1982 by John Woodard and revised in 2017 by Tara Coady and Stephanie Bennett.
Controlled Access Headings
Subjects
Administrative Information
- Publication Information
- Processed by Sarah Appleby and Rebecca Petersen May, 2013
- Revision Description
- Revised by Tara Coady and Stephanie Bennett, Stephanie Bennett, 2017, 2020
- Revision Description
- Revised by Kate Trathen, new accession added, 2026 February
- Access Restrictions
- This collection is open for use. The blueprints in boxes 1-4, 10 are currently being rehoused for long-term preservation. Please reach out to the Collections Archivist for access (sfirris@wfu.edu).
- Copyright Statement
- The nature of the WFU Z. Smith Reynolds Library Special Collections and Archives means that copyright or other information about restrictions may be difficult or even impossible to determine despite reasonable efforts. The Archives and Special Collections of ZSR Library claims only physical ownership of most materials. The materials from our collections are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study, pursuant to the U.S. Copyright Law. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials. Any materials used for academic research or otherwise should be fully credited with the source.
- Preferred Citation
- Graylyn Estate Collection (MS176), Z. Smith Reynolds Library Special Collections and Archives, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.