Franklin Roosevelt opened the first one; Charlotte rebuilt the second from its own stones. American Legion Memorial Stadium at 310 North Kings Drive, in the Elizabeth neighbourhood beside Independence Park, began as a 1936 Works Progress Administration stadium honouring Mecklenburg County's First World War dead - FDR himself spoke at the opening - and spent eight decades hosting Shrine Bowls, high-school and college football, and concerts from Jimmy Buffett to Pearl Jam before age-related struct.....

Charlotte's crown jewel seats its farthest patron 135 feet from the stage. The Belk Theater is the largest hall of Blumenthal Arts at 130 North Tryon Street, the uptown performing-arts complex that opened in November 1992 as part of Cesar Pelli's ensemble with the Bank of America Corporate Center and Founders Hall. Built for roughly 43.6 million dollars, the 2,118-seat theatre takes the contemporary European horseshoe form - tiered rings wrapping the room so even the top balcony stays intimate -.....

The grandest of the performance spaces at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, the Belk Theater is the principal concert hall of uptown Charlotte and the main stage for the city's flagship touring shows. Opened in 1992 as the centrepiece of the North Carolina Blumenthal arts complex on North Tryon Street, it was designed as a world-class multi-purpose theatre capable of hosting everything from Broadway productions to symphony concerts. The auditorium seats around two thousand one hundred peop.....

Charlotte's dance music scene found its warehouse across from a light rail stop. Blackbox Theater at 421 East Sugar Creek Road sits catty-corner from the LYNX Blue Line's Sugar Creek station on the city's northeast side, an independent, self-described gritty-sheik live entertainment complex whose calendar leans hard into electronic music - Space Laces, Deorro, Black Tiger Sex Machine, Kloud and multi-night Whethan runs headline alongside anime raves, Bingo Loco parties and the occasional comedy .....

A mid-century landmark of Charlotte, Bojangles Coliseum is a historic indoor arena on East Independence Boulevard that has served the city since opening in 1955. Notable on its debut for its vast freestanding domed roof, then among the largest of its kind in the world, the building was an engineering marvel of its era and has remained a versatile fixture of the city's sport and entertainment scene for the better part of seventy years. The arena holds around nine to ten thousand spectators and i.....

Charlotte's most flexible stage hides inside a Cesar Pelli tower. The Booth Playhouse is the mid-size room of the Blumenthal Arts Center at 130 North Tryon Street in uptown Charlotte, the 62-million-dollar complex the celebrated architect designed alongside the Bank of America Corporate Center and Founders Hall. The center opened in November 1992 after a funding campaign that stacked 15 million dollars from the State of North Carolina on a matching city bond and 32 million more from private dono.....

Builders had to relocate ninety percent of the support columns under a working restaurant to carve out Charlotte's comedy bowl. The Comedy Zone at 900 Seaboard Street opened in 2011 beneath the Saloon at the AvidXchange Music Factory - the converted mill complex on the edge of Uptown - as a purpose-built, 7,100-square-foot underground club with stadium seating for 400 wrapped around a thrust stage. It gave a permanent home to a Charlotte comedy brand with decades of history: owner Brian Heffron .....

Two hundred people, one DJ booth, and a door that opens at ten - Cue is the late-night engine room of Charlotte's Blackbox Theater complex at 421 East Sugar Creek Road, a compact club built inside the larger venue with its own entrance and its own bar. Where the main Blackbox room holds a thousand for touring bands and large-scale dance events, Cue runs at a capacity listed between 200 and 250, strictly 21-plus, with standard operating hours of 10pm to 2am - a room purpose-set for DJs and nothin.....

The copper chandelier over the bar is made from leftover brewing pipes that the owners took to a firing range and shot full of holes with an M-16 - a tribute to founder Kurt Hogan's distant relative, the 1930s gangster Baby Face Nelson. Heist Brewery, at 2909 North Davidson Street in Charlotte's NoDa arts district, opened in 2012 as the city's first true craft brewpub. The setting carries its own history: the brewpub fills part of the Highland Park Mill No. 3 building, once the largest textile .....

Charlotte built a football stadium before it had ever played a down: when the 49ers kicked off their first game on 31 August 2013 against Campbell, the horseshoe was already standing and 15,314 seats were already sold on the idea. Jerry Richardson Stadium, on the UNC Charlotte campus in northeast Charlotte, is the home of Charlotte 49ers football. The naming money built the program: Carolina Panthers founder Jerry Richardson and Bank of America's Hugh McColl bought the field naming rights in 20.....