2025 Pollstar Live Hall Of Fame Inductee: Ryman Auditorium

The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, opened in 1892 as a religious tabernacle and became a spiritual beacon for music enthusiasts around the globe. 

“We draw on our history and the artists who have performed here in the past,” said Gary Levy, general manager of the Ryman Auditorium. “The artists who play here have a reverence for it – the people who have played here and the building itself. It’s become a bucket list item to perform here.”

Operated by Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc., the 2,362-pew-seat venue has received numerous accolades and awards over the years including 15 Pollstar Awards, in addition to an SRO touring award from the Country Music Association and eight trophies from the Academy of Country Music for Theater of the Year. 

The storied Ryman remains not only a regular tour stop, but marquee play in Music City, this year hosting everything from a multi-day Nashville Comedy Festival with top contemporary touring comics to artists running the musical gamut from Tom Jones to Breland to Japanese Breakfast to a 12-show run by Amy Grant and Vince Gill in December, their 15th Christmas residency at the venue. 

The brick and stained-glass monument of culture was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and named a national Historic Landmark in 2001 for its role in the popularization of country music as the home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974. In 2017, the International Entertainment Buyers Association (IEBA) added the venue to its Hall of Fame. Architectural Digest dubbed it the most iconic structure in the state in 2018. And in 2022 it was named an official landmark by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

It’s a timely step forward for a venue that still has an emotional foothold on the past. The original Union Gospel Tabernacle had an unlikely creator in Capt. Thomas Ryman, a Nashville businessman who owned rough-house saloons and riverboats. In 1885 he attended a local tent revival with the intention of heckling speaker Samuel Porter Jones and ended up a convert.

Capt. Ryman envisioned a large, indoor meeting place, where the faithful could worship in comfort. The gothic revival auditorium took seven years to complete at a cost of $100,000.

When it opened on May 4, 1892, it was $20,000 in debt and to cover costs, non-religious events were booked. Later an unlikely hero stepped in to forever alter the creative vision of the Ryman crossing genres, embracing change and establishing the auditorium’s place in Nashville’s emergence as Music City. 

Lula C. Naff opened shop as an independent concert and event promoter at a time when women didn’t have the right to vote in the U.S. She abbreviated her name to L.C. Naff to sidestep prejudice in the male-dominated industry. She was researching and negotiating deals, advancing production, managing finances, as well as handling marketing, printing and selling tickets from a shirt box. In 1920, she was named general manager of the Ryman and kept the auditorium in the black every year until her retirement in 1955.

Naff laid the foundation for a cross-genre cast of performers including Bob Hope, Charlie Chaplin, Enrico Caruso, Harry Houdini, Katherine Hepburn, Will Rogers, Mae West, Tallulah Bankhead, Ziegfeld Follies, and many more.

By attracting the biggest performers of the day to the venue she cemented the Ryman Auditorium’s global reputation as the “Carnegie Hall of the South.” 

With the reach of the weekly Grand Ole Opry WSM radio broadcast, the Ryman became the main stage for country music hosting the format’s biggest stars including Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline and Elvis Presley and still does. 

The combination of country music and the venue’s religious foundation resulted in the moniker the “Mother Church of Country Music,” which is still used with reverence today.