Every photograph of old Austin you have ever loved lives here. The Austin History Center, in the handsome 1933 Italian Renaissance Revival building on Guadalupe that first served as the city’s central library, is where Austin keeps its memory, and everyone is invited to browse it.
The collections are a treasure chest: hundreds of thousands of photographs, from glass-plate negatives of Congress Avenue to yesterday’s festival snapshots, plus maps, newspapers, city records, oral histories and the archives of Austin’s African American, Mexican American and Asian American communities.
Rotating exhibitions turn the reading rooms into story time for grown-ups, and the reference staff famously love a good question: bring a photo of your grandmother’s street and they will help you find her house. Genealogists, students and the simply curious fill the tables daily.
Cities that remember themselves grow kinder. The Austin History Center is the keeper of that kindness, and Happy City News considers it one of the most Austin places in Austin.
