Through CMF, industry leaders raised money with the effort of CMA Executive Director Jo Walker-Meador to build the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which opened on April 1, 1967.

The original building was a barn-shaped structure located at the head of Music Row, erected on the site of a small Nashville city park.

[1] Early in the 1970s, the basement of the museum building was partially complete, and library expansion began, embracing not only recordings, but also books and periodicals, sheet music and songbooks, photographs, business documents, and other materials.

Building expansion took place in 1974, 1977, and 1984 to store and display the museum's growing collection of costumes, films, historic cars, musical instruments, and other artifacts.

[4] To become more accessible, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum moved to a new, 140,000-square-foot (13,000 m2) facility in the heart of downtown Nashville's arts and entertainment district in May 2001.

In 2014, the museum unveiled a $100 million expansion, doubling its size to 350,000 square feet of galleries, archival storage, education classrooms, retail stores, and special event space.

In addition to the galleries, the museum has the 776-seat CMA Theater, the Taylor Swift Education Center, and multi-purpose event rental spaces.

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has developed multiple platforms to make its collection accessible to a wider audience.

The hall of fame honor was created in 1961 by the Country Music Association (CMA); the first inductees were Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, and Fred Rose.

Solid, earthy materials native to the Mid-South—wood, concrete, steel, and stone—were used in the building's construction as a reminder of the music's strong roots in the lives of working Americans.

Crab Orchard Stone from the East Tennessee mountains lend a homey, rustic touch to the Conservatory's "front porch" atmosphere and is also found on the Rotunda's walls.