The Ryman's Second Life: From Gospel Tabernacle to Mother Church
Tennessee
Thomas Green Ryman made his money running steamboats on the Cumberland River and spending the profits at saloons. In eighteen eighty-five, he went to hear an evangelist named Sam Jones preach at a tent revival near downtown Nashville. By the end of the service he had been converted. He became a devoted supporter of Jones's ministry and decided to build him a permanent place to preach.
The Union Gospel Tabernacle opened in eighteen ninety-two, seven years after Ryman's conversion. Ryman paid for much of it himself. The building was designed for revivals: a single large auditorium with curved wooden pews arranged in a fan, the sightlines drawn to the pulpit at the front. The pews were not upholstered. The acoustics, it turned out, were extraordinary.
Thomas Ryman died in nineteen o four. The building was renamed in his memory. For the next four decades it hosted revivals, political conventions, and occasional theatrical events. Then, on June fifth, nineteen forty-three, the Grand Ole Opry moved in.
The Opry had been broadcasting from a WSM studio space that could seat a few hundred people. The Ryman could hold over two thousand. The pews that had been built for congregants became seats for paying country music fans. Hank Williams played here. Patsy Cline played here. Bill Monroe played here. Johnny Cash played here. The stage was the same one Sam Jones had preached from fifty years earlier.
When the Opry moved to a new suburban venue in nineteen seventy-four, the Ryman was scheduled for demolition. The preservationists who fought that decision argued that the building was irreplaceable, which was true in terms of acoustics and which turned out to be persuasive. The Ryman still stands. It books more than two hundred shows a year and is consistently rated among the finest live music venues in the country. What a riverboat captain built for revivals became the Mother Church of Country Music, which is either a contradiction or a very American story, depending on how you look at it.
