Designed by Charles Barton Keen in 1912, the boathouse was ideal for entertaining. R.J. and Katharine selected it as the site for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company’s Fourth of July celebration in 1916.
For the event, Thomas Sears was commissioned to design a sunken terrace with a wall fountain and electric wall lights. Approximately 400 people, mostly the tobacco company’s division men, salesmen, heads of departments, and their invited guests, arrived at the Reynolds home on West Fifth Street to travel by automobile for their first glimpse of Reynolda, described in the Southern Ruralist magazine as a “fairyland park.”