Ahead on Fourth Avenue rises the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the most comprehensive institution dedicated to preserving and interpreting the history of country music. The Hall of Fame concept dates to 1961, when the Country Music Association began inducting members into a newly created pantheon. The first inductees were Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, and Fred Rose — three of the foundational figures of the modern genre.
The original museum opened in 1967 on Music Row; the building you see now, a striking structure on Fourth Avenue designed to evoke the imagery of country music's symbols, opened in 2001. Inside are Elvis Presley's gold-plated Cadillac, Patsy Cline's evening gowns, Hank Williams's handwritten lyrics, Webb Pierce's silver-dollar-studded car, and hundreds of thousands of archival objects that document country music from its origins in the ballads and fiddle traditions of the southern mountains through the contemporary era. The museum takes country music seriously as an art form and as a social history — it is one of the best music museums in the world, and it sits in the city that made the music what it became.