George Washington Carver Branch Library

The old library building became the first neighborhood museum in Texas devoted to African American history. When East Austin residents won a larger branch library next door, Janie Harrison, Fanny Lawless, Onie B. Conley, Ada DeBlanc Simond and others saw the 1,720-square-foot original building as a home for Black history. Renovation began in September 1979, and the museum opened on October 5, 1980. It mounted about eleven exhibitions a year and since 1983 has hosted the Black Arts Alliance's Regional Black Artists exhibition, and its Youth at Risk program taught area teenagers black-and-white photography.

What the plaque says

George Washington Carver Branch Library In Feb. 1926 the Austin Public Library opened in a room over a downtown store. Within months, the books were moved to this structure, built at Guadalupe and Ninth St., across from Wooldridge Park. In 1933, with completion of a permanent library facility, the original building was relocated here to meet the request of the black community for its own library. The frame structure was brick veneered and named for black educator George Washington Carver. Directed by Hattie Henson, 1933-43, this was the first branch in the Austin library system. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George Washington Carver Museum — steps away
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Cemetery — 0.2 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.5 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• Texas State Capitol — 1.0 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• Site of Old Anderson High School, Kealing Junior High School — steps away
• James L. Farmer, Jr. — 0.2 mi
• Laurine Cecil Anderson — 0.2 mi
• Blackshear Elementary School — 0.3 mi