100 North Main Street, or Wells Fargo Center, is the tallest building in Winston-Salem. It was designed by César Pelli, most famous for the supertall Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. Supposedly the dome was meant to be an interpretation of the Moravian arch, but old Pa Pitt struggles to see anything Moravian about it.
Built in 1926–1927, the Nissen Building in Winston-Salem was designed by William Lee Stoddart. It was one of several buildings in Winston that were successively the tallest building in North Carolina. Although it was finished only two years before the Reynolds Building, the two buildings seem to come from different centuries: the Nissen Building is decidedly conservative, belonging to the first generation of Beaux Arts skyscrapers.
It is fiendishly difficult to get a decent picture of this building. It faces north, so lighting is difficult; old Pa Pitt waited till sunset. It faces a narrow street, so it is hard to get the whole front at once. The picture above is stitched together from multiple photographs, with the perspective adjusted on two planes to make a tolerably realistic-looking image of the building.
100 North Main Street, or Wells Fargo Center, and the darkened BB&T Financial Center, at the very end of twilight.
Opened in 1966, the Winston Tower, originally Wachovia Building, was designed by Cameron Associates. Truliant bought naming rights a few years ago.
Opened in 1929, the Reynolds Building was designed by Shreve & Lamb, who would go on to design the Empire State Building in a very similar style.
Note the tobacco-leaf ornamentation in the metalwork.
