On Monday, Nov. 7, the birthday of the late evangelist, Billy Graham, a new Archive and Research Centre opened nearly 800 miles south of Wheaton College, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Graham’s birthplace.

The 30,000-square-foot state-of-the-art research centre brings together videos, cassettes, films, newspaper clippings, sermon notes, correspondence and a lifetime of memorabilia from Graham’s career, which began with a sermon at a Florida Baptist church in 1937.

The new two-story building, constructed with the latest preservation standards and environmental controls, cost $13 million. It unites all of Graham’s records — not only from the Wheaton archive but from Minneapolis, where he started his formal ministry, and from Montreat, North Carolina, where Graham and his wife lived for decades in a log-cabin-like home.

The archive houses audio-visual records on the first floor and papers, including sermons, correspondence and memorabilia, on the second. The building is located across the road from the Billy Graham Library, the barn-shaped museum on 20 landscaped acres where visitors can trace Graham’s journey through multimedia presentations and interactive kiosks.

“Franklin Graham committed resources to make sure it’s a robust and well-organized authentic archive center,” said David Bruce, executive director of the archive, speaking of Graham’s son and successor, who is now president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

“While we’re open to everybody, our key market is people wanting to learn what God has done and can do in the future that might encourage a young man or woman to take up the same task: a proclamation of evangelism,” Bruce added.

Bruce, who served as Billy Graham’s executive assistant for 25 years, will be working alongside thirteen others hired to staff the archive, which includes eight full-time employees.

Unlike the library, the archive is not open to the public. Researchers must schedule a visit through the website.

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