The Circle Of Ryman Oak

The Grand Ole Opry played the Ryman Auditorium for the last time in its thirty one year residency on 15 March 1974, and opened this house the following night. President Richard Nixon came, five months before he resigned, played piano and took a yo-yo lesson on air from Roy Acuff. The building seats around four thousand four hundred, nearly twice the Ryman, and it was built around a broadcast rather than a congregation, which is what the Ryman had been designed for in 1892. The move was unpopular with a good many performers, and the Ryman sat largely unused for twenty years before it was restored. The new house solved real problems: the Ryman had no air conditioning worth the name and one dressing room, which is why the cast waited out their sets in the bar across the alley. The pews came along too, cushioned this time. The one thing carried across was the floor. On 9 January 1974 an eight foot square of boards was cut out of the back of the Ryman stage, where the hole could be patched without interrupting the shows, and trimmed down into a circle six feet across, white oak and maple mixed. It has never been painted and it carries the scuffs of everyone who ever walked over it. Acuff oversaw the installation himself and told the workmen exactly where on the new stage it had to sit. Every artist who has sung on this stage since has stood on the same boards Hank Williams, Patsy Cline and Bill Monroe stood on. The Cumberland River flooded the building in May 2010 and put several feet of water through the hall. The circle was cut out and stored through the rebuild, then lowered into the new floor that August by Brad Paisley and Little Jimmy Dickens, who stood on it and sang Will the Circle Be Unbroken.