Interiors

Furnishing the building’s interior continued the cooperative community spirit that created the building itself. Individual Austinites and community groups donated the furnishings and rugs. For example, the decorative items for the meeting rooms were funded primarily by the Junior League of Austin. The O.Henry Room contains furniture and special research materials related to short story writer William Sydney Porter (aka O.Henry) who lived in Austin from 1985 to 1897, collected by Judge Trueman O’Quinn.

The Mayors’ Room contains pictures of all the mayors of Austin from 1939 to the present, as well as the official archives of recent mayors. The Austin Art League donated the paintings that hand on the walls of the Reception Room, and the Assistance League of Austin provided most of the furnishings and exhibit cases in the lobby. Tables and chairs from the original central library were refinished and are being used once again by researchers in the Reading Room.

The lobby features items from the former Scarbrough Department Store on Congress Avenue, the Fish family, the Hart family, and other notable Austinites. The Hart family dining room table presided over history in Austin since the mid 1850s, when Treasurer (of the Republic and the State of Texas) James Raymond hosted dinners around it for the shapers of Austin and Texas, probably including Sam Houston. His great-niece (and Austin History Center Founding Curator) Katherine Drake Hart was the next caretaker of the table, and she continued the tradition of hospitality, hosting family and notables alike around the table, which grew to 10 leaves to accommodate the crowds. Mrs. Hart’s children and the Austin History Center Association partnered to refinish the table, and it is now at home in the Austin History Center lobby.