National Life and Accident Insurance Company (Snodgrass Tower)

If there is one thing that Nashville knows, its country music and nothing says country music more than the Grand Ole Opry. We’ll hear more about the Opry’s famous home, the Ryman Auditorium, later in the tour, but right now you are looking at a very important part of the show’s history. 

The William R. Snodgrass Tennessee Tower presently provides over one thousand government employees’ offices, but it was originally built by the National Life and Accident Insurance Company in 1970 in response to their competitor, Life & Casualty, which had built a thirty-one floor skyscraper downtown three years earlier. We will see this building later in the tour. 

National Life started out as a modest insurance agency in 1901, but would grow to be one of the largest insurance companies in the nation. During their earliest years they sold only small premiums to industrial workers, many of whom were African Americans, for five cents a week. In 1920 they began selling life insurance, which allowed their business to grow significantly. 

Edwin Wilson Craig, son of the company’s founder C.A. Craig, came up with the idea for a company radio broadcasting station as an advertising tool. According to Craig Havinghurst, author of Air Castle of the South, Craig said the station would, “extend the company identity, service the community, influence public relations, and support . . . relationships with both prospects and policyholders.” WSM was born on the fifth floor of the National Life and Accident Insurance building on the corner of Seventh and Union in downtown Nashville on October 5, 1925.

WSM, which stands for the National Life’s motto “We Shield Millions,” was launched in 1925 putting both Nashville and country music on the national stage. The Opry continues to air on WSM, making it the longest-running radio program in history. Twenty five years later in 1950, the company created Nashville's first television station, WSM-TV. National Life owned the radio station until 1980 and the TV station until 1981, when their majority shareholders sold the non-insurance related businesses. The building was sold in 1994. 

Who would have thought that an insurance company would be the driving force behind Nashville’s reputation as the home of country music? It just goes to show that sometimes… history is hidden in plain sight.

Cross 7th Ave N and continue west on Union Street. Cross Polk Ave. and stop at the corner of the former Ben West library, your next stop.