Theater
Ryman Auditorium
Gospel tabernacle turned music hall, prized for pin-drop acoustics and rows of original wooden pews.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Ryman Auditorium in Nashville opens on a night in eighteen eighty-five, when a riverboat captain who ran the city's saloons walked into a revival tent planning to heckle the preacher inside. It follows what that conversion set in motion: the tabernacle he built downtown, and decades later, Lula Naff, the widowed stenographer who ran the hall for decades and beat Nashville's censors in court. Look up at the balcony on your way in, part of the same nineteenth-century build that once held hellfire sermons instead of fiddle music.
This audio guide was created using AI.