Austin History Center, Local history archive in downtown Austin, United States.

The Austin History Center is a local history archive in downtown Austin, Texas, housed inside a Renaissance Revival building. It contains research rooms, exhibition galleries, and storage areas where historical documents, maps, and photographs related to the city and surrounding region are kept.

The Texas Legislature granted the site overlooking one of Austin's four 1839 public squares in 1913 for a library. Built in 1933 under the 1928 city plan, it was designed by J. Roy White for Hugo Kuehne's firm and served as the main public library until 1979, when library functions moved to the John Henry Faulk Library next door. The building joined the National Register of Historic Places on May 6, 1993, and in 2025 the Austin History Center moved into the former Faulk building, reopening on December 7, 2025.

The archive holds photographs, letters, and personal papers that show how ordinary people lived in Austin across generations. Walking through the exhibition galleries gives a concrete sense of the neighborhoods and daily routines that shaped the city over time.

Personal belongings must be stored in lockers before entering the research areas, and only pencils are allowed when handling archival materials. It helps to plan ahead and request the materials you need through the in-house system so staff can retrieve them for you.

The loggia ceiling hides a hand-painted fresco by Harold "Bubi" Jessen, a German-born artist who studied architecture at the University of Texas and later designed more than 20 campus buildings. Its plaster groin vault shows winged horses and flowing curved lines. Jessen also wrote a children's book, "Humbert the Lion."