Allan Shivers Library and Museum, Woodville

The building on North Charlton Street in Woodville doubles as the town's public library and a museum to the thirty-seventh governor of Texas, Allan Shivers. Shivers served from nineteen forty-nine to nineteen fifty-seven, one of the longest gubernatorial tenures in Texas history, and he grew up in this part of East Texas before his family moved to Port Arthur. The structure itself dates to eighteen eighty-one, built by Robert Cruse.

In nineteen sixty-three it was moved from its original site to make way for a motel, and the Shivers family had it restored and converted into a museum. The first floor recreates a Victorian parlor with family antiques; the entire second floor is devoted to the gubernatorial years. A trophy room holds souvenirs from Shivers's Zambia safari.

It is an unusual combination of local archive and personal legacy.