First, there’s the wardrobe.

They wear a black vest, black pants, and white collared shirt — and if the weather is cool enough, they’ll add a tailored black suit jacket and maybe an overcoat. If there’s a big event going on at Wake Forest University a mile north, they’ll study who’s coming to The Graylyn Estate and greet guests by name, wearing a lapel pin featuring a gold Demon Deacon on the move, walking stick in hand.

Then, there’s the job title: butler.

At the close of room service availability, guests might find butlers like Bill Goff delivering their tea trays. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

It brings to mind a bygone era, captured in the pop-culture amber of novels, TV shows, and movies. Courtly characters like Mr. Carson, the head butler in the popular British TV series Downton Abbey, fulfilled duties that seem picayune and foreign in the frenetic pace of our world today.

But such responsibilities aren’t foreign at Graylyn, a boutique hotel and conference center situated on 55 acres. Owned by Wake Forest, its five buildings accommodate guests in 85 rooms.

Bill Goff enlists the help of young guests like Turner, 9, and Parker, 7, to feed the koi fish. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

Graylyn employs eight butlers, skilled observers and expert listeners all. They can read a room, interpret facial expressions, understand body language, and look for the smallest details to help any guest feel remembered. Just three miles northwest of downtown Winston-Salem, the busyness of the city feels far away as butlers help guests navigate Graylyn’s constant symphony for the senses, where the calming shhhhh of a bubbling fountain accompanies the sweet scent of Carolina jessamine near a tunnel of crab apple trees.

Butlers operate out of Graylyn’s Manor House, the second-largest historic home in North Carolina. It’s quite the sight. The four-story, 33-room mansion looks like a castle. It stretches a tenth of a mile from end to end and is built of stone and steel.

Nathalie Gray Photography courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Wake Forest University

In and around the Manor House, butlers stand ever ready to answer questions, take guests on a tour of the grounds, and fulfill tasks at all hours. They’ll polish a groom’s shoes on his wedding day, give a daughter a princess tiara for her birthday, and recruit the youngest child they see to help feed the mansion’s koi fish. Or they’ll pick up guests from the local airport at 4 in the morning and hear them gush, “I didn’t know anyone would come get me!”

They help guests slow down their rushed lives by emulating the hospitality of a worldly woman whose gracious heart was as huge as her castle-like home. With the tasks they carry out daily, butlers often ask themselves: What would Mrs. Gray want?

• • •

On a Sunday afternoon, Kathleen Hutton escorts guests on a tour of the Manor House. For more than two hours, she unravels the story of how Bowman and Nathalie Gray lived and employed their wealth to improve health care, education, and the quality of life in Winston-Salem.

In every room where she stops, Hutton points to the furniture, the paneling, and even the paint color to illustrate Mrs. Gray’s eclectic tastes. Her exquisite style and business acumen turned her home into an elegant patchwork quilt, full of antiques and art she discovered across the Atlantic in France, Egypt, and all points in between.

Bowman and Nathalie Gray Photography courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Wake Forest University

“As you walk through, you see [that] Mrs. Gray didn’t worry about transition,” Hutton tells the group. “Just enjoy it.”

As a butler and Graylyn’s coordinator of house experience, Hutton’s position is as imaginative as it sounds. Whenever someone reads her name tag and asks what she does, she replies: “I am whatever you need me to be. A valet. A concierge. A butler. A historian. And the person who can give you directions to the bathroom — I can do that, too.”

Kathleen Hutton, coordinator of house experience, looks for ways to re-create the experience of staying with the Grays — like writing welcome notes to guests. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

After 28 years as the director of education at Winston-Salem’s Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Hutton came to Graylyn in 2018. At Reynolda, part of her role was training docents. At Graylyn, she’s become her own docent. Every month, she gives guided tours of the Manor House and helps visitors understand Bowman, the former president of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and his wife, Nathalie. She explains how Mrs. Gray guided artisans and architects in creating seemingly every inch of the couple’s 46,000-square-foot home, completed in 1932.

Hutton calls her a “generous, softhearted woman,” who wanted everyone who visited her home to feel special. Today, Graylyn’s 129 employees work to embody that open-armed spirit. Mrs. Gray wrote notes to friends, family, and visitors underneath a wall of windows in a room beside the indoor pool and decorated her home with the flowers she grew in Graylyn’s three greenhouses.

To honor Mrs. Gray, Hutton and her team adorn the estate with beautiful floral arrangements. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

With whatever she tackles, Hutton tells herself: Think like Mrs. Gray. She uses a calligraphy pen to write notes to guests, gives stockings to overnight visitors at Christmas, and buys and arranges fresh flowers throughout the Manor House every few days.

“Mrs. Gray would want that,” Hutton says. “In what I’ve read about her, people always talk about her thoughtfulness, and I know those little extras can surprise and delight. They say, ‘This is for you.’”

Other butlers feel the same way. That’s easy to see.

• • •

Before the sun rises above the wall of oaks framing Graylyn’s expansive front lawn, Hunter Manning gets busy with his daily hour-long task.

He circles the Manor House, taking off seat covers, opening umbrellas, and checking the koi pond for leaves and debris. He unlocks the vans, gets the golf carts ready, and plucks any cocktail glasses left outside from the night before. Inside the house, he turns up the lights and walks the second and third floors, picking up any trays and dishes outside the rooms. He has a name for what he does: “waking up the house.”

Graylyn butler Hunter Manning welcomes guests into the home’s stately foyer. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

As he works, the morning fog lifts, bands of orange and yellow streak the sky, and Manning appreciates once again the architecture of the house and the layout of the property, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. “It’s quiet; not a soul is stirring,” says Manning, a butler since 2017. “It takes you back to what it could [have been] like when the Grays were here.”

By the time Manning’s shift ends in the mid-afternoon, he’s walked five miles in his black Cole Haan shoes. He’s answered questions, parked a few cars, driven guests around the estate in a golf cart, and told anyone coming in: “Let me know if you need anything. Just say the word.”

When Manning leaves, Bill Goff arrives. Like Manning, Goff has answered his share of questions from guests who visit from all over the world: “Do you have cowboys here?”

Manning leads the way to the second- and third-floor guest rooms. Original to the Manor House, the stair tower features ornate ironwork and a beehive ceiling. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

“What is that furry thing with a tail in the trees?”

“Are those fireflies? We’ve heard about them and never seen them.”

By nightfall, when guests have left or retired to their rooms, the Manor House lights go from bright to dim, and Goff begins what he calls “closing down the house.” He starts outside. He locks the van, locks the two golf carts, covers the chairs, and closes the umbrellas. Then, in a small room behind the front desk, he logs on to a desktop computer and checks an Excel spreadsheet to see what responsibilities the butlers will have the next day.

Book a stay in the sumptuous guest rooms within Graylyn’s manor house. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

A few feet away, tacked to a large corkboard, is a note from an appreciative guest, a physical therapist named Anna: “Thank you to everyone for being so kind!” she wrote, adding a smiley face. “Free physical therapy for three years.”

“It’s probably the best job an old man can have,” says Goff, 77. “We’re paid to be nice to people.”

An hour or so before midnight, he heads home. The following morning, his wife, Barbara, will ask, “Did anything happen last night?”

Goff always has stories. All butlers do.

• • •

Every year, Graylyn’s butlers take care of 23,000 guests, many of whom come to the estate for one of at least 550 events, including weddings, conferences, and anything memorable unfolding at Wake Forest. They all bring to the job a nimble curiosity and years of experience in service-oriented occupations. Manning worked in restaurants, retail, and at Chetola Resort. Goff spent 35 years as a service and materials manager for a glass bottle manufacturer. Tim Auman retired in June 2024 after a quarter century as the chaplain at Wake Forest. Both jobs, he says, do the same thing; the design is just different.

Mrs. Gray (pictured with her husband) loved flowers and was a member of the Twin City Garden Club. Photography courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Wake Forest University

“What we do here feels like a secular version of that,” says Auman, who started as a butler last summer. “As butlers, we practice heartfelt hospitality. Our hope is that each guest feels seen, heard, and cared for.”

Wake Forest alumni, faculty, and staff who come to Graylyn sometimes recognize Auman and ask him what’s behind going from a university chaplain to a Graylyn butler.

“You meet all these amazing people,” Auman tells them. “And it’s really fun.”

Wander the grounds at Graylyn, where gracious arbors and benches provide shady respites to pause and take in the beauty. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

In a storage room near Hutton’s office, bursts of color bloom from five-gallon buckets: Tulips. Sunflowers. Hydrangeas. Roses. And magnolia leaves as big as an adult’s hand. Hutton finds them at some of her favorite shops in Winston-Salem after dropping off her granddaughter, Estelle, at day care. She then turns vases throughout the Manor House into her own personal canvas.

Hutton wants to create memories, those moments when guests see a bouquet — especially upon waking up in their rooms — the still-life images that will forever remind them of being here, at Graylyn.

Mrs. Gray, Hutton believes, would like that.

The Graylyn Estate
1900 Reynolda Road
Winston-Salem, NC 27106
(336) 758-2425
graylyn.com