Charlotte Audio Walking Tour

Highlights

• 
  Spectrum Center

  Home of the NBA's Charlotte Hornets, Spectrum Center anchors Charlotte's uptown entertainment district, and you are outside it now. The arena opened in 2005 as Bobcats Arena, named for the expansion franchise that launched that year under founder Bob Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television and the first African-American majority owner of a major professional sports team.

• 
  NASCAR Hall of Fame

  Curves that evoke a racetrack sweep across the NASCAR Hall of Fame you face, the institution that celebrates America's most distinctly Southern sport and its deep roots in the Charlotte region. NASCAR — the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing — was founded in 1948 by Bill France Sr. in Daytona Beach, but it grew up in the Carolina Piedmont.

• 
  Truist Field

  Baseball came back to uptown in 2014 with Truist Field, the ballpark you see here, home of the Charlotte Knights, the Triple-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, and one of the finest minor-league baseball stadiums in the country. The ballpark opened in 2014, bringing professional baseball back to the heart of uptown Charlotte after decades in the suburbs.

• Biddle Memorial Hall, JCSU

  Notice Biddle Memorial Hall, the historic centerpiece of the Johnson C. Smith University campus and one of the most significant surviving buildings in Charlotte's African-American history. The hall was constructed in 1883 and named for Major Henry Biddle, the Union Army officer whose widow's gift of $1,400 provided the seed money for the institution that would become JCSU.

• Johnson C. Smith University

  Just two years after the end of the Civil War, in 1867, Johnson C. Smith University began educating African-American students in Charlotte, and its entrance opens ahead of you: one of the most important historically Black colleges and universities in the American South. The university was founded by Presbyterians as Biddle Memorial Institute, named for Major Henry Biddle, a Union officer whose widow donated funds for the school.

All 41 stops

• 7th Street Public Market (Uptown / First Ward)

  Around you, vendors sell coffee, bread, and produce inside 7th Street Public Market, a food hall that opened in 2012.

• Romare Bearden Park (Uptown / Third Ward)

  Picture Romare Bearden, one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century, born just a few blocks from this park that now carries…

• Bechtler Museum of Modern Art (Uptown / Levine Center)

  Your walk through the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art reveals one of the most unexpectedly rich collections of twentieth-century European art in the American South.

• Biddle Memorial Hall, JCSU (Biddleville / JCSU)

  Notice Biddle Memorial Hall, the historic centerpiece of the Johnson C. Smith University campus and one of the most significant surviving buildings in Charlotte's African-American…

• Biddleville Neighborhood (West Charlotte)

  Your route through Biddleville crosses one of Charlotte's oldest and most historically significant African-American neighborhoods, which grew up around Johnson C. Smith University in the…

• Birdsong Brewing (NoDa)

  Birdsong Brewing, the Charlotte craft brewery in front of you, has made community its defining quality since it opened in 2012.

• Bank of America Corporate Center (Uptown / Financial District)

  Look up at the tallest building in Charlotte, one of the most distinctive skyscrapers in the American South.

• Camp North End (North End)

  Your visit to Camp North End brings you to the most ambitious adaptive reuse project in Charlotte's history and one of the most significant industrial-to-arts…

• Levine Museum of the New South (Uptown)

  Your visit brings you near the Levine Museum of the New South, an institution dedicated to telling the history of the American South from the…

• Discovery Place Science Museum (Uptown)

  Generations of Charlotte children have been introduced to the wonders of the natural world and the principles of science inside Discovery Place, the science museum…

• Elmwood Cemetery (West Charlotte)

  Elmwood Cemetery, where you now walk, is the oldest municipal cemetery in Charlotte, established in 1853 as part of the Victorian garden cemetery movement that…

• Evening Muse (NoDa)

  Since 2002 the Evening Muse, the intimate listening room you have reached, has been at the heart of NoDa's music culture.

• First United Methodist Church (Uptown)

  First United Methodist Church has held this uptown corner as one of the pillars of Charlotte's religious landscape since the 1830s.

• First Presbyterian Church (Uptown)

  Ahead of you is the home congregation of Charlotte's founding generation.

• First Ward (Uptown East)

  Brooklyn once stood where you are now, in First Ward, the northeast quadrant of uptown Charlotte and one of the most transformed pieces of urban…

• Founders Hall (Uptown / Financial District)

  Founders Hall, the glass-enclosed public concourse you are entering, threads beneath and between the towers of Charlotte's financial district and connects them to the street…

• Fourth Ward (Uptown North)

  Fourth Ward, Charlotte's best-preserved Victorian neighborhood, spreads out ahead of you.

• Harvey B. Gantt Center (Uptown / Levine Center)

  Copper cladding that recalls traditional African textiles wraps the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture in front of you, one of the…

• ImaginOn (Uptown East / First Ward)

  ImaginOn rises here as one of Charlotte's most beloved civic buildings, a place that takes children seriously as readers and theatergoers.

• Johnson C. Smith University (Biddleville)

  Just two years after the end of the Civil War, in 1867, Johnson C. Smith University began educating African-American students in Charlotte, and its entrance…

• Levine Center for the Arts (Uptown)

  You have reached the Levine Center for the Arts, a campus of cultural institutions that Charlotte built in the first decade of the twenty-first century…

• McGill Rose Garden (Uptown / First Ward)

  Hundreds of rose varieties fill the McGill Rose Garden near you, a hidden gem tucked into the First Ward neighborhood just north of the uptown…

• Mint Museum Randolph (Randolph / Eastover)

  Federal-style columns front the Mint Museum Randolph, housed in a building that is itself a piece of North Carolina history.

• Mint Museum Uptown (Uptown / Levine Center)

  Glass and zinc rise ten floors in the Mint Museum Uptown ahead of you, the newer of Charlotte's two Mint Museum locations and the centerpiece…

• NASCAR Hall of Fame (Uptown / Second Ward)

  Curves that evoke a racetrack sweep across the NASCAR Hall of Fame you face, the institution that celebrates America's most distinctly Southern sport and its…

• Neighborhood Theatre (NoDa)

  A marquee on North Davidson Street announces the Neighborhood Theatre, a 1945 movie palace that survived the death of neighborhood cinema to become one of…

• NoDa — North Davidson Arts District (NoDa)

  Murals and old storefronts line NoDa, the North Davidson Arts District where you now walk, the neighborhood that showed Charlotte what a genuine arts community…

• NoDa Brewing Company (NoDa)

  NoDa Brewing Company, one of Charlotte's founding craft breweries and a cultural anchor of the North Davidson Arts District, opened here in 2011.

• Old Mecklenburg Brewery (Dilworth / South End)

  Long communal tables and a beer garden greet you at Old Mecklenburg Brewery, a Charlotte institution that draws on the German immigrant heritage of the…

• Optimist Hall (North End / NoDa Adjacent)

  Brick walls and an old mill roof enclose you inside Optimist Hall, a food hall and mixed-use development that occupies a former textile mill complex…

• Plaza Midwood (Plaza Midwood)

  Central Avenue runs through Plaza Midwood, the Charlotte neighborhood that has most successfully blended historical preservation with contemporary creative culture.

• Rosedale Plantation (North Charlotte / Newell)

  Archibald Frew built the main house of Rosedale in 1815, and you now face one of the few surviving antebellum plantation houses in the greater…

• Settlers Cemetery (Uptown / Third Ward)

  Iron fences ring the oldest burial ground in Charlotte, where you now stand, established around 1776 as the town's first public cemetery.

• Spectrum Center (Uptown / First Ward)

  Home of the NBA's Charlotte Hornets, Spectrum Center anchors Charlotte's uptown entertainment district, and you are outside it now.

• The Square — Trade & Tryon (Uptown / Center City)

  Trade and Tryon cross at your feet, the founding crossroads of Charlotte, North Carolina.

• St. Peter's Catholic Church (Uptown)

  Twin brick towers rise over you at St. Peter's, the oldest Catholic parish in Charlotte, founded in 1851 to serve the Irish and German immigrants…

• St. Peter's Episcopal Church (Uptown)

  Sharp spire and careful stonework: you have found one of the most architecturally distinguished churches in uptown Charlotte.

• Sugar Creek Corridor (Northeast Charlotte)

  Textile mill villages of the early twentieth century shaped the Sugar Creek corridor, the stretch of northeast Charlotte you are walking now.

• Truist Field (Uptown / Third Ward)

  Baseball came back to uptown in 2014 with Truist Field, the ballpark you see here, home of the Charlotte Knights, the Triple-A affiliate of the…

• Visulite Theatre (Plaza Midwood / Elizabeth)

  Art Deco lines from 1937 still shape the Visulite Theatre ahead of you, a movie house that has become one of Charlotte's most beloved live…

• Wesley Heights (West Charlotte)

  Bungalows and front porches line the tree-lined streets of Wesley Heights as you walk, one of Charlotte's earliest streetcar suburbs and a neighborhood that has…

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