The new museum, located behind the historic Calvin Jones House, is bright and elegant, featuring sloped ceiling architecture, high windows and exposed beams designed to evoke the atmosphere of the nineteenth century barn associated with the original home and farm.
Visitors will notice the added roofline resembles the seven outbuildings described as part of the Jones property when it was sold to the North Carolina Baptists in 1832. This gives a sense of how this place might have looked in 1834, the inaugural year of the school that would eventually become Wake Forest University.
Today, guests entering the museum find a refined exhibit space, beautifully detailed and climate controlled to protect the museum’s documents, portraits and artifacts.
The museum’s public areas include an auditorium, main exhibit hall and library, and the Edwin G. Wilson Reception Gallery, named in honor of the Wake Forest University Provost Emeritus whose decades of service have included contributions as student, teacher, leader, and advocate of this town and university.