War Memorial Auditorium Building

Nashville architect Edward Dougherty won the design competition, working as an associate of McKim, Mead and White of New York. The building was dedicated on September 21, 1925, on a site near the State Capitol that Governor Albert H. Roberts supported. The Grand Ole Opry performed there from about 1939 through 1943, its fourth home, before moving to the larger Ryman Auditorium. The building has hosted numerous governors' inaugurations. The sculptor Belle Kinney Scholz made the statue Youth for the building, also called Victory.

What the plaque says

War Memorial Auditorium Building In 1925 Tennessee, Davidson County, and Nashville dedicated the War Memorial Auditorium as an enduring tribute to their sons ad daughters who served the nation on land, sea, and in the air during the First World War. The division of history of the Department of Education collected the names of servicemen who died and whose names would be placed on the bronze plaques that were placed on the building circa 1929. Leopold and Belle Kinney Scholz's gilded bronze Victory statue, part of the original design, was dedicated in 1931. Originally seating 2,200 and featuring excellent acoustics, the auditorium became the performance home of the Nashville Symphony from 1925 to 1980, the home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1939 to 1943, and a frequent stop on the African American Theater Circuit in the 1950s.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — steps away
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• Tennessee State Capitol — steps away
  William Strickland's Greek Revival capitol on Nashville's Capitol Hill, finished in 1859 and built from the bottom up with the labor of enslaved men.
• Ryman Auditorium — 0.3 mi
  The 1892 brick tabernacle in downtown Nashville that was the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, now a National Historic Landmark and working concert hall.
• National Museum of African American Music — 0.3 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.

More markers nearby

• Edwin W. Craig — steps away
• Tennessee State Capitol — steps away
• Downtown Presbyterian Church — steps away
• Avon N. Williams, Jr. — 0.2 mi