About the Historical Society of Palm Beach County
The Historical Society of Palm Beach County was formed in 1937, and its first gift set the tone for everything that followed: West Palm Beach attorney A. Stanley Bussey donated a single black-and-white photograph of an island street scene. From that one image the nonprofit society has built the largest archive of Palm Beach County history anywhere, documenting the people and events of the county, the wider state, and the Caribbean, with holdings that reach back at least 12,000 years to the region's first inhabitants.
For its first seven decades the society had no permanent public gallery. That changed in 2008 with the opening of the Richard and Pat Johnson Palm Beach County History Museum on the second floor of the restored 1916 county courthouse at 300 North Dixie Highway in downtown West Palm Beach, directly across from the modern courthouse. The museum presents permanent and rotating exhibits, docent-led tours, and mock trials in the old courtroom, and a fourth-floor Children's Education Area offers hands-on activities tied to the current special exhibit, with story time and craft programs for ages 8 and under on select Wednesdays and Saturdays in season.
Education is central to the society's mission. Its programs include student tours, lesson plans and education videos for teachers, traveling trunks, pop-up exhibits, a speakers bureau, and a lecture and events series. A paid professional staff includes a director of research and archives, a curatorial and archives coordinator, and an education coordinator.
Collections and Research Services
The archive holds about four million photographic images, hundreds of postcards, and architectural drawings, manuscripts, diaries, maps, newspapers, journals, periodicals, and research files gathered since 1937. A growing catalog is searchable online, and most images can be reproduced for private, business, or educational use. Research is by appointment only, in person or by Zoom, and requires at least two weeks' notice; email the archivist with a description of your project and expect a reply in five to eight business days. Staff do a preliminary search first and will invite you to the reading room if material is abundant. Appointments are free for members; non-members pay $20 per hour. If you cannot visit, staff or volunteers will research, write a report, or copy materials for $100 to $150 per hour. Photocopies run 25 to 50 cents for letter and legal sizes, and high-resolution digital reproductions are sold under a price sheet and permission form. Researching a house or a family in the county? Start with our guides to finding out when a house was built and finding old photographs of a neighborhood, then book an appointment.
Planning Your Visit
The museum is open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and closed Sunday; administrative offices are open weekdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. General admission is free. Special exhibits may carry a fee ($12 for non-members at the time of writing), waived for members, students, Museums for All and SNAP cardholders, and NARM, MARP, ROAM, and SERM reciprocal members. Metered street parking takes coins and cards, and the 4th Street Lot uses the ParkMobile app; handicapped decal holders park free at meters. The ADA entrance is on the east side of the building on the first floor, with elevators to the museum level, and a wheelchair can be borrowed at the second-floor museum store. Tours are first come, first served, with pre-registration encouraged through the outreach director at (561) 832-4164. Full details are at pbchistory.org. For other Florida collections, see our pages on the Historical Society of Central Florida in Orlando and the Historical Society of Sarasota County.
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