Ryman Auditorium

Steamboat captain Tom Ryman and the preacher Sam Jones raised the money for a gospel tabernacle, and the Nashville architect Hugh Thompson gave it a Victorian Gothic brick front with steep gables and tall pointed windows. It opened in 1892 as the Union Gospel Tabernacle and took Ryman's name after he died in 1904. For decades it was the city's big room for lectures, opera and touring acts. Booker T. Washington spoke here, and Marian Anderson sang in 1932.

The building also carries the South's racial order in plain sight. The balcony, added in 1897 with money from the Confederate Veterans Association, was called the Confederate Gallery until a 2017 plaque replaced that name. Tennessee's Jim Crow laws called for segregated audiences, and some shows were billed for "White Audiences Only" or "Colored Audiences Only," though period photographs show mixed crowds in practice. The Fisk Jubilee Singers performed here in 1913.

The Grand Ole Opry broadcast its weekly show over WSM from this stage from 1943 to 1974, and the honky-tonks along the alley behind it, Tootsie's Orchid Lounge among them, grew up around those nights. After the Opry left for Opryland the hall was nearly lost. It was stabilized in 1988-90, restored in the 1990s and named a National Historic Landmark in 2001. Today it is a working concert hall with daytime tours.