Driving into Winston-Salem, it looks like a real serious city and, with a population around 248,000, I guess it is. Among North Carolina cities it was recently edged out of fourth place by now-booming Durham. But whereas Durham has acquired an urban profile that is filling in with the continuing construction of living space, Winston's widespread skyline has a stately, service-industry gleam to it.

The Twin City's downtown is dominated by the enormously well-endowed Wells Fargo Center building, which, with 34 floors, is now the tallest skyscraper in town (and the only one with a domed roof). But from 1929 to 1966, when tobacco was king, the tallest building in Winston-Salem was the 21-floor Reynolds building, headquarters for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. (In 1929 it was the tallest office building in the country south of Baltimore.) It’s now home to apartments, a hotel, and a restaurant. Worth a stop at 51 East 4^th Street, if only to see the awesome deco murals.

Winston-Salem is sometimes called "Camel City" due to its historic role in the tobacco industry and Reynold's legendary "Camel" cigarette. R.J. Reynolds built the second tobacco factory here in 1875 (shortly after the first one was built by Pleasant Hanes, another big player in the tobacco boom; Hanes later went into underwear in a big way), and by 1914 Camels were the most popular cigarette in the world. This helped make Winston-Salem the largest city in North Carolina for several decades before cigarette became a dirty word.

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