2022 US Trip – Day 8 (Secretary’s Office at Williamsburg – Oldest Archival Building)

I very much love an archival building, there’s something about books, archives, documents and the like that just captivate me. And this is the oldest archival building in the western hemisphere, or that’s what the museum claims. I’m not sure that I can actually think of a building in the UK that’s earlier than this that was solely built for storing documents (as opposed to storing them within part of an existing building), so I can’t dispute their claim. They built it because the Capitol building caught fire in 1747 and they lost their documents, so they wanted a fireproof structure where nothing could be destroyed. And this is it, known as the Secretary’s Office where county clerks were also trained and clerical work was completed. It’s heavily restored, but some of the structure is original.