The Austin History Center has reopened for limited public access in downtown Austin at the John Henry Faulk Library, restoring in-person use of city archives for Mueller residents and other Austinites after the collection closed in February 2025 for a move.
The History Center began welcoming visitors again in early December 2025 inside the renovated Faulk building at 800 Guadalupe St., next to the original 1933 central library building at 810 Guadalupe St., following a months-long relocation of archival materials and building work intended to create a two-building “history campus” for Austin’s library system. The City of Austin funded the conversion with $14.5 million from the city’s 2018 bond package, reworking the first floor for public access and exhibits and upgrading upper floors for archive storage and staff work areas.
The reopening was marked by a city ribbon-cutting on Dec. 7, 2025, with Mayor Kirk Watson, Austin Public Library officials and community members, as the library system began a phased rollout of public spaces and services. Under the current schedule, the Reading Room and an “Unboxing the Archive” exhibit are open Thursdays through Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m., with the building closed Sundays through Wednesdays, and limited reference and reproduction services available as additional areas come online.
For Mueller families and students—along with researchers from nearby neighborhoods including Brentwood and Highland—the move is intended to expand access to a collection used for school projects, genealogy searches, neighborhood history, and preservation work, while providing long-term, climate-controlled room for materials that no longer fit in the 1933 building. The renovated Faulk building adds more than 60,000 square feet of space for the History Center, and public resources highlighted at reopening include Austin City Directories from the 1870s through the 1920s, an O. Henry collection tied to author William Sydney Porter, a photograph archive of more than one million images, more than 400 oral-history interviews, and Austin Music Network performance recordings dating to the 1990s.
“In recent years, what became clear was that the collections and the archives were just outgrowing that space.”, said Adam Powell, Executive Director of the Austin History Center Association(https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/transformational-austin-history-center-announces-160000377.html?utm_source=openai) Powell, whose nonprofit partner organization formed in 1979 as the History Center took over the 1933 building, said the new setup is designed to preserve both historic structures while giving the archives capacity to grow.
“All of this was really focused in on what we needed infrastructure-wise in order to support the archives moving over (to Faulk),” said Scott(https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2024/08/downtown-commission-gets-preview-of-next-chapter-for-john-henry-faulk-building-and-austin-history-center/?utm_source=openai) City planning for the building included asbestos abatement and major systems upgrades—such as electrical work and other infrastructure improvements—to support archival storage, including climate control, as well as fire-suppression needs outlined during earlier briefings.
City officials have also begun longer-range vision planning with Steinberg Hart and M. Goodwin Museum Planning Inc. for how the Faulk building and the 1933 building will function together, including proposed public-facing features such as a rooftop garden, expanded gallery space and a plaza café as part of a $54.8 million second phase that would require voter approval in a future bond election. The reopening and phased access follow a broader pattern of Austin using public dollars to expand cultural infrastructure, a theme previously explored in Mueller Today’s reporting on city-backed arts programming during Women’s History Month.
“An Austin institution preserving old library materials has officially moved into its new space. … To prepare the Faulk space, city leaders decided to carve $14.5 million out of the city's 2018 bond funds.”, said CultureMap Austin(https://austin.culturemap.com/news/city-life/austin-history-center-reopening-faulk/?utm_source=openai) Austin Public Library has said additional public areas will open as staffing and services ramp up, while the older 1933 building is expected to be reused as part of the system’s longer-term downtown history campus.
