The Athens County Historical Society and Museum will be moving from Court Street to West State Street.
The Athens County Historical Society and Museum has called Court Street home since 1980. But after 35 years, it's moving to a new spot next year.
The historical society is planning to set up shop at the building that houses the First Christian Church, 24 W. State St. The society bought the building earlier this year for $800,000, Tom O'Grady, executive director of the museum, said.
O'Grady said the switch will give the historical society room — roughly three times more than the current space — to include additional exhibits and provide additional climate-controlled rooms needed to keep old documents and artifacts safe.
"We’ve had a storage issues for our artifacts for more than a decade," O'Grady, said. "We’ve used a couple state buildings on State Street to store some of our artifacts, but they aren't climate controlled."
The society's Court Street building was purchased in October by Cornwell Properties for $758,500, O'Grady said.
He also said the new building will serve more as a regional museum for Southeast Ohio as a whole because many neighboring counties don't have extensive historical collections.
"There’s a large space in there for ... different types of programs, whether they be educational events or renting out the space for other types of events," he said.
O'Grady said he hopes the increase in interactive exhibits will help attract students, which he said is a "target audience" of the museum. Some of the exhibits at the museum will focus on Ohio University history.
But he also said the building change probably won't have a large effect on the number of students stopping by.
"Just because its a different building, I don’t know why they would walk an extra block if they're not going to stop in anyway," O'Grady said.
Isaiah Khosrof, an undecided sophomore at OU, said he's never been in the museum and didn't know where it was located.
Khosrof said the change would probably make it even less likely for him to visit.
Despite that, O'Grady said the move has been in the works for years.
The historical society reached out to the church 10 years ago with interest in acquiring the building, O'Grady said, but the church was not in interest at the time.
Since then, the church's congregation has shrunk, Linda Swaim, a lay leader at the church, said.
"We’ve known for some time that the building was really more than we can physically take care of and that needed to downsize," she said.
When the church announced earlier this year it would be selling the building, members of the historical society took advantage of the opportunity.
"It appeared to us there were other interests in that building, both of which may have converted that corner into more student housing," O'Grady said. "We thought one of the other benefits is we can do some historic preservation on the building itself."
Swaim said the historical society was the preferred buyer by the the church, which was constructed in 1916.
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"We were really thrilled that the historical society wanted our building," she said. "It's kind of hard to see a church become (rental property). We are very at peace that the building is going to be used for the community."
The historical society will begin moving into the building during the winter and will open its doors sometime in spring, O'Grady said.
Swaim said the church will be allowed to continue holding services for up to three years at the building until the congregation constructs their new building on West Washington Street.
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