The ornate Greco-Byzantine dome crowns the Margaret Blanke Grigg Reading Room in the Missouri History Museum's new library. The room was formerly the sanctuary of the United Hebrew Temple.

Visitors to the Library and Research Center may access a widely diverse range of collections in the Missouri Historical Society's Reading Room, housed under the dome of the beautifully renovated historic United Hebrew Temple. There, researchers will find one of the St. Louis region's premier research collections that documents the history of St. Louis, the State of Missouri, the Mississippi and Missouri Valleys, the Louisiana Purchase Territory and the American West.

Serving a diverse audience in the St. Louis community and beyond, the Missouri Historical Society Research Collections are open to the public. The Research Center is staffed by professional librarians, archivists and curators who are available to support and assist the research efforts of our visitors. In a collections annex adjacent to the Reading Room, a staff of collections managers, conservators, photographers and technicians see to the long term preservation of the collections entrusted to the Missouri Historical Society's care.

The Missouri Historical Society's Research Center coordinates much of the institution's historical research. Anchored in substantive original research in the Missouri Historical Society's Collections, the Research Center contributes to the development of the institution's programming, exhibitions, publications and special projects. The Center also helps facilitate arrangements for visiting scholars, sponsors a research fellowship program and hosts exchange scholars from regional colleges and universities. The Library and Research Center is also the home to the Missouri Historical Society Press, which has published a broad range of books on the region's history since its founding in 1992. The press' Guidebook Series allows St. Louisans to retrace the past in their own neighborhoods, while the Classic Reprint Series returns significant works of Missouri history to print.

In addition to these series, the press publishes scholarly and popular works on topics such as the Civil War, the 1904 World's Fair and African American history. All MHS Press publications are available for purchase at the Missouri History Museum and the Library and Research Center. The press' books are distributed nationally by the University of Missouri Press. Gateway, a popular history magazine, is also published out of the press' offices.

Search the library catalog online.
Some of the MHS library catalog is now searchable online! Click here for a partial catalog of books, periodical titles and newspapers.

For more information, 314-746-4599
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.