Minnesota History Center

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The Minnesota History Center is a museum and library that serves as the headquarters of the Minnesota Historical Society. It is near downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota, and is considered one of Minnesota's finest public buildings.

The History Center is on Kellogg Boulevard, between the Mississippi River and the Minnesota State Capitol. Before this building was built in 1992, the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) occupied what is now the Minnesota Judicial Center, originally built for the Society in 1917. Before that, MNHS was housed in the basement of the State Capitol.

The Minnesota History Center is one of the 26 Minnesota Historical Society sites and is home to the Minnesota Historical Society headquarters, the Society's collections, an expansive library, and 44,000 square feet (4,100 m2) of museum gallery space. The museum showcases interactive in-house-developed and traveling exhibits, as well as historical programming and lectures. The Center also contains conference rooms, the 3M Auditorium, Caf� Minnesota, two museum gift shops and 12,800 square feet (1,190 m2) of classroom space.

More than half of the 427,000 square feet (39,700 m2) building is underground, much of which is used for storage. The Minnesota History Center possesses over 1,000,000 artifacts, including archaeological objects, books, photographs, maps, paintings, prints, drawings, manuscripts, government records, newspapers and periodicals. Such artifacts are stored in the 100,000 square feet (9,300 m2) of storage space available in the Center. In this storage space, the shelves reach heights over 25 feet. The Center also has a conservation laboratory, where conservators repair, stabilize, and maintain the Society's thousands of valuable objects.