Downtown Raleigh North Carolina - NC Capital - Virtual Treadmill Scenery & Virtual Walk - City Walks
Mar 17, 2025
#walkingtour #CityWalks #Raleigh #virtualwalk #treadmillworkout #treadmillscenery #virtualtreadmill
We have arrived at the Capital city of Raleigh, NC. I wish I'd had more time to walk a bunch of other places in the area but alas, the road called. It was a quiet winter day and I essentially walked from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and the Legislative Building, past the Capitol Building, and down along Wilmington St, Salisbury St, and Fayetteville St, to the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts. It was a quiet, grey morning but that made for pleasant walking. I hope you enjoy the treadmill walking scenery. As always, please remind me in the comments if I said I was going to link to something and forgot. -Henry
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Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:01
hello walkers and welcome back to city walks a what am i calling this a relaxed travel
0:08
channel a virtual travel virtual treadmill no treadmill travel walk sorry
0:14
a lot of keywords in there um my name is henry i will be your proxy
0:19
walker today your virtual travel guide which i always like to caveat with the fact that i'm not actually a guide
0:25
because uh we're actually more of a co-discoverer here um
0:32
the uh trying to get my camera to work the way i want it to
0:37
because i don't know all the details here i did a little research and i've certainly been here
0:43
40 years ago and i like to have discoveries and
0:50
notice things and share these with you i think that's a lot of fun and it's going to be sort of
0:55
a slow meander through downtown uh from where we are now oh did i tell
1:01
you we're in raleigh north carolina um
1:06
i told you my name it is about 46 degrees fahrenheit eight degrees celsius
1:14
we're on jones street here at the north carolina nature museum or natural history museum as well
1:20
as the history museum i think is this other one but they've got this super cool massive globe
1:27
uh structure it's probably i don't know 30 feet 40 feet tall super cool so we're gonna
1:34
come over up salisbury towards the state capitol but i feel like i've got some other things to say oh yeah
1:40
thank you to our patreon supporters your support is not only financially helpful
1:47
but really a great um a great encouragement moral
1:53
encouragement uh to know that these walks are helpful and valuable
2:00
to you guys and it just makes me excited about getting out here and filming more
2:07
i'm not sure i think that museum over there is a history museum and this
2:12
is the museum of natural sciences and this is at least in part a nature research
2:20
center and museum and coffee shop and after that
2:25
i'm not really sure what's going on here uh it is a misty day uh so hopefully
2:33
hopefully we won't get too much moisture on the lens here it is
2:39
uh humid and chilly uh if you haven't subscribed yet please do so
2:45
that helps me and the channel um lets youtube know that uh you guys find this
2:51
valuable and also lets you know if you click the bell you should probably get a notification
2:58
when we drop new videos which should be every monday and thursday but sometimes i do a
3:05
live stream or you know a little add-on bonus video um
3:11
comments i love getting your comments love interacting with you guys and hearing about what you value
3:18
love hearing about your personal stories your triumphs your travails your additions and even your corrections
3:27
uh it's just a point of connection for me and i really enjoy that
3:33
so please leave comments okay i grew up in wilmington if you've
3:40
been watching you know that because i just did a couple walks out at riceville beach
3:45
and a couple walks downtown in wilmington uh but we would come i think we came
3:51
here a few times on family trips and school field trips
3:58
down you know because it is oh here's the department of justice
4:03
and also education i'm not really sure um one of my my foibles here on this
4:09
channel is that i'm not easily distracted i like to
4:14
talk and have a conversation with you guys but then i'll break into that and
4:22
talk about something that i've just noticed or that i think is interesting
4:28
uh so hopefully you guys can [Music]
4:33
forgive that crossover um
4:39
coming up salisbury here salisbury and eden edenton
4:45
and this should be the capitol building over here that we'll walk up to
4:51
we've got some older buildings um raleigh is 474 000 people in the city
4:57
proper the metro or research triangle area which i'll discuss in a second
5:03
has i don't know two to three million um the research triangle is
5:10
a sort of geographic triangle from between raleigh durham and chapel hill
5:17
and i think it was started back in 1854 with the technology or research development park
5:23
or something um anyway it's referred to as a research triangle now raleigh is home to north carolina
5:31
state university durham about 20 30 miles away is home to duke and then chapel hill is home to the
5:39
university of north carolina aka the tar heels
5:45
raleigh's named for sir walter raleigh back in the day
5:50
who funded um the lost colony
5:58
and uh which was a colony that kind of just disappeared on the coast of north carolina
6:06
uh 1600 sometime
6:13
what else can i tell you about raleigh it's i guess one of the first
6:19
planned cities i'm going to slow down here and show you guys around
6:24
i missed looking at the there it is hillsborough street oh the oak city i think because they
6:31
have all these oaks that they planted and kept in the downtown area supposedly
6:38
which i was noticing when i was over in um look at these trees these are fantastic
6:44
uh over in charlotte the downtown had all these great trees i don't know what kind they were but
6:50
didn't really notice um but it just really added something to the
6:56
to the city just made it so much more organic and i'd say livable but i've never lived
7:02
there look at that massive magnolia tree that is awesome we had
7:08
in wilmington where i lived we had two they were about half that size and they
7:14
were still massive and they were fantastic i'm gonna have to keep on this
7:20
uh screen i guess as the let me get a little little swipe
7:26
sorry about that uh as the mist continues to come down [Music]
7:40
it's a very nice city it's uh it's fairly quiet today i didn't tell you what time it is it's
7:46
about 11 o'clock in the morning so people are out walking i mean i'm working in their offices so not out
7:54
sorry [Music] i think this is an oak tree um
8:01
but there's traffic around we came up through i-40 interstate 40 from wilmington
8:07
and uh really wasn't um that busy at all
8:12
now i'm gonna go over this way this is fayetteville street in morgan the corner of
8:20
well i don't i guess i don't have to go down there but uh we'll wend our way back and forth so i might as well go
8:26
down here there's a great sign down here um about president johnson so
8:33
north carolina is home to a bunch of presidents for what has been
8:39
um cross over here uh one of them was andrew johnson
8:46
apparently who there's a sign up here it says uh andrew
8:53
president of johnson united states was born about a mile northeast of here in a kitchen
8:59
which seems oddly specific but i guess it illustrates his humble
9:04
origins maybe
9:11
when i was growing up he is known as the only president to have been impeached
9:16
that is no longer the case there's been three of them now
9:23
here we go 1808 1875.
9:30
there's your placard [Music]
9:38
sorry to be swinging you about this is wilmington street we came in on this way
9:45
there are a lot of cool trees along here i have to imagine that in the
9:52
in the summer it is well in addition to being hot and humid
9:58
fairly shady which is nice [Music]
10:05
what's going on here but
10:22
it's a interesting structure over there
10:28
i guess this stairway to a parking garage
10:33
oh somebody's cooking this smells good down here coming up on target street
10:39
h-a-r-g-e-t-t [Music]
10:56
wish i had had an umbrella but i
11:03
we don't normally [Music] film in the rain so
11:09
it's usually either super rainy or not at all for us
11:14
it's kind of a cool old looking block of buildings
11:20
and we're going to go to the right excuse me what's up man why are you recording me
11:25
oh not you man just the street
11:33
rally times over there try not to focus on any one person
11:40
and i certainly respect uh that guy's desire to not be filmed or to
11:46
be at least know why he's being filmed so if i can remember i will uh blur them
11:53
out before posting hopefully i can do that
11:59
i don't want to impinge anybody's privacy
12:06
[Music] coming back to fayetteville
12:12
i don't know what street what building this is wells fargo i guess
12:18
makes sense
12:26
so i think we'll wind our way back and forth and then we'll come back up fayetteville
12:32
to the capitol how's that sound should
12:38
get us some a good walk i looked these up these trees were in
12:44
augusta i think like a chinese elm i love the um
12:50
the pattern of the bark the colors it's really pretty
13:02
coming up on salisbury how i pronounce it salus berry
13:19
[Music]
13:44
maybe go down another block here
14:06
so
14:26
[Music]
14:45
it is a nice leafy place not sure if this is sort of the center
14:51
of social action down here or not
14:58
coming up on mcdowell
15:14
somewhere over in this direction south maybe it's the other direction nc state
15:20
is around here somewhere
15:27
across down curious about this park over here
15:33
see it's a nice green well-maintained treed park
15:41
kind of like that we are on this massive
15:47
well i call it massive basically was turning into a three-week road trip my son and i
15:54
we started off in montana of course uh and uh
16:01
hold on william holden was uh an editor
16:06
and provisional governor elected governor and impeached and removed in 1871.
16:12
i'm not sure what the story was that was um
16:18
it's probably not even a laughing thing but anyway we're on this big road trip
16:24
uh from there we went down to south carolina and then
16:31
up through north carolina and now we're headed up to dc
16:37
well northern virginia and then we're going to head home
16:43
it's been a it's been a lot of fun doing these walks and i'll be doing a few more of course
16:48
look at the colors of those trees over there it's red and yellow i like that this is
16:53
sort of the shade and i don't know what is about that structure that's so nice
17:00
so pleasing um anyway i'm looking forward to getting up
17:05
to dc and doing some walks in there and possibly a couple of northern virginia um
17:11
but i'm also kind of looking forward to getting home here's the wake county justice center so in addition being the
17:17
state capital it is the county seat and if you're not familiar with u.s
17:23
governmental organizational structures or
17:28
hierarchical structures the county seat is the capital of the county which is a subunit of the state
17:35
[Music] state being a subunit of the federal government or the nation
17:44
but a lot of uh the states here i don't know what it's like in other countries but
17:50
here the states have a lot of sovereignty and autonomy
17:57
that are a lot of things that are reserved specifically for them um
18:03
in fact it states that in the u.s constitution um
18:08
that all other rights reserved for the states uh so anyway that's a little bit of a us
18:15
civics lesson the nc state
18:21
mascot is the wolf pack
18:27
strength in the back i didn't call out the street name forgot
18:33
to look but we're coming back up on salisbury so hopefully i'll get a glimpse of what the
18:38
street we're currently on is
18:50
martin look at that thing that building is a little bleak
19:00
it's the county courthouse
19:07
look at that some i missed out on some i'm gonna cross over ah
19:13
nice mural that's right
19:28
this is the pnc building i think
19:34
pnc is a bank i don't know what it stands for
19:41
this is kind of a neat restaurant garland
19:48
[Music]
19:54
about to cross fayetteville
20:03
[Music]
20:21
see the uh museum down there no it's a performing arts center that's what it is
20:33
[Music]
20:39
mecca restaurant down there cool old sign
20:50
this looks like news trucks movies for spies
21:13
like these old buildings in here they uh been turned into
21:19
shops and restaurants and bars and there's also a fair amount of
21:24
residential stuff down here which is good and a couple parking garages so we make
21:30
our right on wilmington again
21:49
red hat you know i've seen that we're also coming up on a building
21:55
for truest i've been meaning to look up
22:02
what that is
22:10
it's a bank
22:22
huh big banking company i guess we're gonna get into some uh
22:28
music being thrown out into the street there
22:36
a little pop music from the 80s
22:41
i think red hat used to be i think like a
22:47
service company for unix operating systems although it was more of a i think is
22:54
public we call that it's freeware open source
23:01
it would help companies implement that
23:07
system it's quite the building i remember they went public in the
23:12
early 2000s big ipo
23:19
it's funny that i would no remember that
23:27
remember coming over here out here too and going to the history museum i'm getting these little toy bronze
23:33
cannon kept those for years those were a lot of fun
23:39
little miniature things
23:45
we are on davey now this looks like a fancy hotel
23:53
i guess maybe it used to be a fancy hotel
24:11
you can see it's boarded up at least at the base
24:16
level could use some work for sure
24:27
[Music]
24:38
we've got a good mural coming up here on the left too
24:47
i used to think murals were so uh i didn't they didn't appeal to me
24:54
i think partly because so many went up in the 60s and 70s and just sort of
24:59
they didn't age well and they didn't they weren't maintained um
25:06
but i like the new ones really cool let's go take a look at this one pardon me this is
25:14
salisbury again it's from whence we came
25:22
this has some text on it looks like but i don't it's a dance i don't i don't
25:29
know it's a myriad media building oh good
25:36
alfred williams and company i wonder if that is a performance company
25:45
as i wander my wander and wonder my way around the city if you know any of the answer to these things
25:51
please feel free to put them in the comment section below i i welcome any kind of additional info
25:58
and any kind of curious about myriad media um
26:06
info that i might have not uh
26:12
realized
26:19
it must be a video source uh they had a bunch of video cameras in the company in the window and
26:25
i don't always wonder about that this is the sheridan by the way
26:32
um this brick building looks like maybe across the way too in
26:37
that modern building
26:43
that's interesting um anyway i don't want to like
26:51
make people feel uncomfortable and went anyway by filming inside without permission
26:57
uh i think that's not okay
27:02
to do there's a residence in by marriott down here and then this massive building on
27:08
the right too that looks like it might be some court of i'm gonna guess it's a theater maybe an art museum
27:15
let's find out coming up on cabarrus
27:21
c-a-b-a-r-r-u-s
27:27
no it's a convention center so oh look at this dude
27:40
you know
27:48
uh here's a statue of a quite a
27:53
flamboyant rally we'll go over take a look real quick
28:01
there's definitely a memory of what he looked like
28:07
that i picked up from school here
28:13
obviously we studied we all had to learn about him
28:18
i think he got beheaded if i recall correctly here's a the convention center window i don't
28:24
feel bad about that because it's not specific it's a cool sculpture
28:30
with guitar necks oh look at this
28:37
look look what we find this is one of the things i love doing right so somebody has left a painted rock in here
28:44
you can do it and then it says rally rocks
28:50
post to pick keep or re-hide i'm just gonna put it back because i think that's a sweet little
28:57
easter egg there super fun all right so we got the marriott
29:03
all kinds of hotels here nice little garden this is a pretty cool looking building
29:09
too it's always hard to know
29:16
what's going to age well and what's not but this looks like a pretty cool design
29:26
you know a little new different but not pushing it too far
29:33
look i'm going to give you a kind of a look of the skyline here
29:41
that that's kind of uh
29:49
you know it doesn't it from that perspective it doesn't uh
29:55
feel that it looks bigger than it feels it feels like a smaller town
30:01
this christmas decoration here
30:07
coming up on lenoir or lenoir
30:12
leno ir uh and of course we're walking along salisbury still sallisbury
30:26
the mist seems to have passed for a little while anyway that's nice
30:59
oh
31:26
[Applause] this is the residence inn
31:55
uh off to the right is the we're at south street here we're gonna go kitty corner at some
32:02
point we don't get run over
32:07
and this is the duke energy center for the performing arts and
32:13
i had forgotten what uh duke is a big name here there's duke
32:19
university there's duke energy uh it's all over the place
32:25
the best of my knowledge not affiliated at all with the racist politician from i think
32:30
louisiana mississippi named david duke who was infamous for
32:35
a hot minute back in the 80s and 90s um it was
32:41
i just looked it up and i i want to get his name right james buchanan duke
32:48
uh 1856 to 1925. he was a tobacco magnet as well as an
32:54
electrical energy production magnet and he's affiliated with duke university
33:00
i think he helped found it maybe uh or fund it but this is and then there's the duke
33:05
energy which is a big energy production company here and uh this is the duke energy
33:11
performing arts center which is pretty pretty cool
33:18
uh very it's like they took a classic old building
33:24
and made it modern took ripped out the guts
33:29
and made it modern but i think says remo raleigh memorial auditorium i suspect that that whole thing is new can't
33:36
guarantee that but uh some nice christmas decorations
33:42
and just really pleasant structure and building and little park associated with
33:49
let it take let's take uh a u-turn and let's head back we'll just
33:55
go along fayetteville street here and uh
34:01
head back to the capitol and we'll see all the kind of it's kind of the main street and we crossed it a bunch but
34:08
you can see the truest building over there i have never heard of the truest bank they have all these massive buildings
34:13
here in north carolina i wonder if it was a company that changed a name or rebranded
34:22
um anyway we're um
34:27
we'll walk back to the capitol and see some stuff as we come back to
34:33
lenoir
34:38
now obviously there is much more to raleigh than this downtown area and maybe someday we'll come back and cover
34:45
that too but for now we're just gonna stay here in the downtown area
34:59
there is something pleasant about
35:04
the lack of hustle and bustle now they're um
35:10
in places like charlotte or st louis they are full-on busy
35:17
vibrant downtowns with lots of stuff going on lots of people doing things and going
35:23
around and that's great because you know that level of excitement and vitality is
35:30
necessary for success or progress or whatever but
35:36
just walking around it's really nice to be walking here in raleigh too and it's
35:43
just kind of laid back people are going around doing their thing but there's not
35:48
thousands of thousands of people on the street and again
35:54
that's great you know those cities are exciting they're fun but there's something nice about this
36:00
too it's a cool little piece of art
36:10
interesting i don't see a plaque
36:16
i like that well this is cool down here this square
36:23
there's four columns down here
36:28
i guess the tr the truest building on the left and i'm not sure what's here on the
36:33
right we got first national bank and some other things
36:39
but you can you can see these things they look like they probably get lit up at night
36:47
lots of leaves on them metal leaves
36:52
see there's four of them
37:06
looks like they maybe have speakers on them too they probably i have to assume that they'll close this
37:12
off from time to time and uh turn it into pedestrian only
37:30
i love it when they uh look at these little lights here as well the oak leaves
37:37
[Music] you can see the the trees that line the roads up here
37:43
the streets
37:53
i always get a lot of funny looks with this camera
38:10
so
38:22
[Music]
38:30
coming back up on davey street now this is that hotel or i assumed it was a hotel because it's
38:35
got that little roof thing which i cannot remember the name of
38:41
and this looks like that used to be the sir walter and i don't know if it's still
38:47
being used and it's just the uh it's apartments but the ground floor is
38:54
uh kind of trashed you know looks like they're redoing it
39:01
looks pretty classy though like it used to be oh it's an elderly community
39:09
maybe they're hopefully they're just reworking it
39:14
coming up on davies again
39:24
wait i'll wait
39:29
curious about this building too looks like it's about
39:34
80 or 90 years old
39:50
let's cross over there and find out because there's another cool building too
39:58
that's the courthouse but beyond the courthouse that's the waverly
40:05
aikens wake county office building
40:17
the reason i want to come over here is this kind of grass looking window treatments
40:24
that are retro and cool and could have been replaced a long time ago but they haven't been they've been
40:30
maintained i like that it's partly probably because it's a county building
40:37
ah there's something uh retro cool about that
40:46
at the news station over there
40:52
and then you've got the county courthouse off to the left here this
40:58
uh imposing legion of doom looking structure
41:05
um but this is the other one i was kind of curious about which is probably also county building
41:12
but we'll find out
41:18
a little surprise well let me put it this way i think it'd be super cool if they turned these few blocks into pedestrian
41:26
zone it's so close anyway
41:31
oh it's a federal building century postal station
41:37
a little surprise if that was still the case but it does have a post office box
41:49
united states bankruptcy court
41:59
i think um raleigh is listed as one of the fastest growing cities in the country
42:05
or at least has been recently uh
42:11
run across here test this gimbal
42:28
love these old buildings just the
42:34
treatment of them the visual they're visually interesting compared to
42:39
at the street level compared to some of these other buildings i've said this before this blue and
42:44
white one is nice too good right a lot going on there
43:03
boyle pierce like these old retro signs too i'm gonna pop out here real quick
43:10
right that's empty unfortunately but i can see a
43:17
fancy dress shop in there or maybe an old maybe a bar
43:24
let's go take a look it's got like some cool uh wood in there
43:31
you see this wood siding i don't know
43:54
coming back on hargett street
44:00
you can see that old building that's nice [Music]
44:05
pardon me i caught a light
44:13
[Music]
44:19
yeah i'm gonna turn around i don't remember if we came this way or not but
44:25
this building here i like
44:31
isn't that funny i have a building that i like
44:36
but i do
45:03
big parking garage here just so when you're next to the capitol building yeah
45:09
you have to have parking some nice outdoor space here too
45:24
[Music] uh
45:34
[Music] i like that outdoor dining too this sort of covered space but it's open
45:42
it's hard to have that in montana where we are
45:58
all right i think we will swing around the other side of the capitol
46:06
we came from over on the left before and we'll go right
46:21
this is a pretty small building i can't imagine that this is still where
46:26
well i can't imagine still where the legislature meets
46:32
maybe it's the executive branch now
46:38
hit me up in the comments if you're from north carolina and know some of the answers to this
46:45
i didn't really have good internet connection on the way in so i didn't do as much research
46:51
i didn't read the full wikipedia article i love these trees aren't these trees great
46:57
especially this one look at this one look at that oh
47:03
big branching shading trees like
47:08
it's giving us a big ol hug have my
47:14
southern accent starting to creep back in a little bit
47:21
which was never really strong wasn't nothing
47:49
all right here are the presidents from north carolina some bombards
47:56
not the people these cannons uh james k poke
48:01
james knox poke andrew jackson and andrew johnson
48:07
all presidents of the united states uh from a long time ago
48:13
i want to thank you guys for joining us here in raleigh north carolina capital of the state
48:19
uh hope you enjoyed this walk this meander through the downtown area
48:25
and i hope you will come back again we're gonna have more walks as i mentioned earlier uh like subscribe
48:32
comment all that stuff especially the comments i love those but mainly come back again next time oh
48:38
you might tell your friends you know if they're on their treadmills and need something to do and watch
48:44
this can be kind of nice i think so i hear uh anyway thanks see you guys again
48:49
soon till then keep on stepping
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