Romare Bearden Park and Uptown’s public spaces

Uptown Charlotte was built for banks, and for most of its history its public space was a plaza with a fountain and a rule about skateboards. Romare Bearden Park changed that in 2013, and the decade since has added a ballpark, a splash pad, a rebuilt greenway and a calendar of free events that make the center city usable by people who don’t work in it. This guide covers the park and the rest of Uptown’s open space, what each is for and when to go. The parks are county land; the businesses link to the directory.

Romare Bearden Park

The park is 5.4 acres at 300 South Church Street, named for the Charlotte-born collage artist, opened in late August 2013, and designed by supervising artist Norie Sato around Bearden’s paintings and collages (Wikipedia). It has two gardens, a courtyard of tables on crushed granite, a formal event lawn, a play area with interactive digital chimes and several waterfalls, and it sits directly across from Truist Field, home of the Charlotte Knights. Free live music runs May through September, and the splash pad is the best free thing for a kid in the center city (Axios Charlotte). Our read: the view of the skyline from the lawn at blue hour is the single most photographed frame in Charlotte, and it deserves to be.

Around it

Truist Field is across the street, and a Knights game with the towers behind the outfield is the best cheap night Uptown. Bank of America Stadium is a few blocks south, so on Panthers and Charlotte FC days the park is the pregame lawn; our stadium guide covers the food. The Mint Street light-rail stop is the transit link. And the towers on the north side of the park are apartments now, which is why the park has a Tuesday-morning stroller crowd it didn’t have in 2013.

First Ward Park

First Ward Park is four acres on the north side of Uptown with a splash pad, a fountain and outdoor workout equipment, directly on the Blue Line (Axios Charlotte). It’s the calmer of the two parks, tied to the 7th Street Public Market across the street for a picnic, and it’s where the north-side residential towers walk their dogs. ImaginOn, the children’s library and theater, is a block away, which makes First Ward the better park for a rainy day that clears.

The plazas and the squares

The Square, at Trade and Tryon, is the symbolic center of the city, four bronze statues on four corners, and it’s where Charlotte gathers when something happens. Marshall Park, five acres by the government center with a pond and amphitheater, has long been the protest and rally ground and is slated for redevelopment (Axios Charlotte). The Green, a small park between the library and the convention center, has the fish sculptures and the shade. And the bank plazas along Tryon, privately owned but publicly open, are where the lunch crowd sits; they close for private events more than they used to.

The greenway through Uptown

Little Sugar Creek’s urban section, 1.29 miles finished in 2012 and inspired by the San Antonio River Walk, runs along the east edge of the center city (Wikipedia), with parking at 1129 East 3rd Street and 1100 East Trade (Mecklenburg County). It links Uptown to the Metropolitan shopping area, Central Piedmont and, since the 2025 reopening past the hospital, Freedom Park. It’s the way to leave Uptown on foot without crossing an interstate ramp, and the greenway guide has the full route. The Rail Trail picks up on the south side toward South End.

What happens in the parks

Charlotte Center City Partners programs a lot of Uptown’s public space and keeps the calendar: the summer concerts at Bearden, the holiday events, the markets. Blumenthal Arts spills festival programming onto the streets around the Belk Theater. Uptown Funk Tour walks visitors through the history, including the public art. Charlotte Pride fills Tryon Street each August with the largest festival in the Carolinas. And the Mint Museum‘s Uptown building, on the Levine Center for the Arts campus, is the indoor half of an afternoon that starts on the Bearden lawn.

The art

The park’s design is itself the art: Sato translated Bearden’s collage technique into the layout, so the gardens, the granite courtyard and the waterfalls read as pieces of a composition rather than park furniture (Wikipedia). Bearden was born in Charlotte in 1911, and the park is the city’s main acknowledgment of one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century. The public art and mural guide in this series covers what’s around it; Depeña Studio, the practice of public artist Ivan Toth Depeña, is one of the Charlotte studios working in the same civic space.

Using Uptown’s space

Go to Bearden on a game night for the crowd and a weekday morning for the quiet. Take kids to the splash pads in July and to the Knights on a Friday for fireworks. Park once; the decks near the ballpark are the cheapest and the streets around the park close on event days. The parks close at dark, and Uptown’s after-dark public life is in the bars, not the lawns. And the honest measure of the last decade: in 2013 there was no reason for a family to spend a Saturday Uptown. Now there are three parks, a ballpark, a greenway and a library, and the Uptown neighborhood page lists what’s around them.

Know an Uptown space we’ve missed? Tell us.