MUSEUM & CULTURE
Matheson History Museum
Alachua County · North Florida & First Coast
A free local history museum on University Avenue, with an archive of more than 20,000 Florida postcards and a barn of a thousand old tools.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The Matheson exists to keep and explain the history of Gainesville, Alachua County and the country around them. It opened in 1994 and now takes up several buildings on one site. The museum itself is in the former American Legion Hall at 513 East University Avenue. The library and archive sit in the old Gainesville Gospel Tabernacle, put up in 1933, and hold more than 20,000 historic Florida postcards, 1,500 stereograph cards, and maps, photographs, documents and books besides. The Tison Tool Barn holds more than a thousand tools running from the 1850s through to the early twentieth century. The Matheson House, one of the three oldest houses in Gainesville and finished in the late 1850s, stands on the same ground but is closed at present for rehabilitation; Alexander Matheson built it. The Library and Archives moved into the renovated Tabernacle at 418 East University Avenue in 2016, and the Tison Tool Barn came to the museum as a gift in 1993. Sweetwater Park is part of the same site. Admission is free and donations are invited. It opens Wednesday to Saturday, eleven in the morning until four in the afternoon
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