Town’s Municipal Archives and Data Heart on Santa Rosa is now house to the San Antonio Municipal Archives Museum.
The brand new museum options preserved paperwork and relics courting again three centuries, together with metropolis data and presents from San Antonio’s sister cities.
Metropolis Archivist Marcus Flores moved to town two years in the past and shortly after renovation on the Workplace of the Metropolis Clerk began.
Over his 25-year profession, he studied museums and labored as a curator. However he began out as an archivist when he was 15 on the state archives of New Mexico.
“Right here, I’m getting the perfect of each worlds,” he stated.
The San Antonio Municipal Archives Museum had its grand opening as we speak and can begin accepting appointments on Monday.
“Lots of people consider San Antonio and consider the Alamo,” stated Metropolis Clerk Debbie Racca-Sittre. “I would like individuals to think about San Antonio and take into consideration a authorities that has been round for 300 years.”
The gathering highlights important factors of time in San Antonio’s 300 years of historical past, akin to a vibrant outfit just like what settlers from the Canary Islands wore in 1731.
Flores stated this museum invitations the individuals to San Antonio to dive deep into their metropolis’s historical past and encourages them to interact with its archives.
“Many individuals don’t know now we have all of this,” he stated Thursday at a preview of the museum. “The museum goes to lift consciousness about what now we have, which actually is a number of significant historical past.”
The museum is small. It was once a workers break room close to the data facility, the place beginning and loss of life certificates are created and processed. The partitions function portraits of previous mayors Henry Cisneros, Julian Castro, Ron Nirenberg and present Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones.
Beginning within the winter, the museum will function historic exhibitions.
The partitions, lined with cabinets and timelines, element varied components of San Antonio’s historical past. One wall explains sister-city agreements showcasing varied presents akin to a wooden carving from Kumamoto, Japan and a silk hand fan from Gwangju, South Korea.
Flores stated the presents will probably be rotated to showcase as many gadgets as potential.
Behind the scenes and never for public viewing is a large archival warehouse that holds different paperwork and relics from town’s previous. Tall cabinets maintain bins of metropolis council assembly minutes, posters from necessary native occasions, and different varied artifacts, together with a currently-unlabeled spear and enormous signal of town’s emblem.
The archive warehouse area and museum is funded by town’s annual price range and its $2 million renovation was funded partially by town’s 2022-2027 $1.2 billion municipal bond, accepted by voters.
The workplace additionally acquired a $15,000 aggressive grant from Humanities Texas.
“It’s a joke,” Racca-Sittre stated. The workplace of town clerk was knowledgeable that they’d received the grant in February earlier this yr earlier than being informed it had been minimize by the U.S. Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE), solely to be later knowledgeable in August that the provide remained on the desk.
