For the first time in more than a year, the Houston Memorial Library and Museum in Athens opened its doors to patrons Tuesday as part of a soft reopening.

According to board chairwoman Anita Raby, the Houston library will be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays through the end of May. The library is located in the house of former Alabama governor George Houston at 101 N. Houston St.

Raby said the decision was made to reopen with reduced hours in order to give library staff time to catch up on work that needs to be done. The library has been shuttered since March 23 of last year when the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Occupancy will be limited to 10 patrons at a time, and visitors are asked to continue to wear masks and socially distance while inside the library.

“Our staff is made up of retired folks,” Raby said. “We had to protect ourselves and our patrons.”

Raby said it feels “wonderful” to finally be able to reopen the library to its patrons. There are approximately 15,000 books available for borrowing as well as many historical items on display in the Antebellum home.

Raby said the plan is to expand the library’s hours in June to 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and to stay open until 7 p.m. Tuesdays “so people who work can get here.” The library will also be open on the first Saturday of each month, just like before the pandemic struck.

“We are working on a book order so we can catch up,” Raby said. “Our last order was when the pandemic started a year ago, and there are a lot of books written in a year.”

She said the Houston library has a wider selection of fiction and mystery titles than Athens-Limestone Public Library, along with old westerns, romance novels and a children’s section.

Houston history

Houston was elected the 24th governor of Alabama and served in the position from 1874 to 1878. According to Raby, members of the Houston family, who no longer lived at the home, decided to let the city use it for public events in perpetuity beginning in 1938.

A lending library that had begun at the Limestone County Courthouse was then moved to the historic home at that time, with the house becoming the first public library in Athens.

Raby said the city gained ownership of the house decades later, and work continues to this day to maintain the library, restore the home and make the furnishings look more historically accurate to Houston’s time. Some of the items, like a desk and piano on the first floor, are believed to have been owned by Houston himself.

“The Houston library is a great tourism draw for Athens-Limestone County,” said Teresa Todd, president of Athens-Limestone County Tourism Association.

The association hosts historic walks in the spring and haunt walks in October that feature the Houston house.

Raby said when schoolchildren come to visit the library, they are used to the modern way books are checked out using a computer scanner. Given the historic nature of the home that houses the Houston library, things are done a bit differently there in keeping with the aesthetic.

“We still do the old-fashioned stamp,” Raby said. “We show them the card catalog. If they want to see if we have a book, we can look it up on the computer, but we let the children learn the old-fashioned way of doing things.”