Nashville’s growth is explosive right now. The city is characterized by a booming country music industry, tech and manufacturing jobs, and beautiful housing developments. Many young professionals with good salaries are moving to Nashville and spending money in this economy. But visiting historic sites reveals how recently wealth came to Nashville. Nowhere in Nashville have I felt this truth more than at the Grand Ole Opry.
The Grand Ole Opry is legendary as the place that made country music famous, and I’d been looking forward to seeing it. As I pulled off the highway in East Nashville, though, the road wound around a huge, high-dollar shopping mall called Opry Mills. Nothing was open at that hour in the morning so I continued on. Next, I saw an enormous cream-colored building that looked like a palace. Manicured flowerbeds and tulip trees graced the rows of windows perfectly. Isn’t it amazing how the more expensive the landscaping is, the more effortless and naturally beautiful it looks? This was the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center.
I had to walk for ten minutes to find the front door, which featured plants inside the revolving part of the door. I went in to explore and found fairyland.
Inside the center, the Cascades Atrium connects the hotel, restaurants, and resort amenities under a giant glass greenhouse roof. In an abundance of green plants, a huge waterfall thunders down beside coffee sippers on the patio. But I hurried on – where in all this was the Grand Ole Opry itself?
Google Maps told me I was a fifteen-minute walk away, so I left the hotel and convention center. I finally reached the spot and took a long stare. THIS was the Grand Ole Opry. A brick building, underwhelming after the massive resort hotel. A rustic entryway made of wood. Two old men in cowboy hats and rocking chairs playing checkers on the covered porch, waiting for the 10:00 backstage tour.
The Grand Ole Opry is dwarfed by the tourist attractions, the mall, the conference center, resort, and hotel nearby. They didn’t build big in Tennessee a hundred years ago. But that’s okay. What the building lacks in size is made up by the passion of the people who love country music, Nashville, Tennessee, and the whole south.
~ The Dauntless Princess ~