On 7 June 1986, the Beuel Museum of Local History was opened in the oldest half-timbered house still standing in Beuel - Wagnergasse 2 (formerly Steinerstraße 36). The house was privately owned by Dieter Haese, then chairman of the Heimat- und Geschichtsverein.

This first museum of urban history in the Bonn area quickly became very popular. It was able to expand its collections with countless objects donated by citizens of Beuel and Bonn or acquired by the Heimatmuseum.

In the meantime, the city of Bonn bought the half-timbered house and also the neighbouring house Wagnergasse 2 (formerly Steinerstraße 34), a brick house (field-fired brick building) from the previous century. It was renovated and made available to the museum of local history by the city on 15 September 1989. In this way, the collections, parts of which were still housed in private houses, could be brought together, arranged according to certain criteria and distributed between the two houses.

On 11 November 1991, work began on the reconstruction of the historic barn from 1662 in Wachtberg, followed by the topping-out ceremony on 19 September 1992, and three years later the building work was essentially completed.

The long construction period can be explained by the necessity to make own contributions in addition to the subsidies from the state and the city of Bonn, which were significantly higher than the sum of the two subsidies. Since the museum does not charge admission fees, offers guided tours to everyone free of charge and the administration, maintenance, equipment and operation are all carried out by volunteers, the length of the construction period is quite understandable.

The gatehouse, completed in October 1994, contains a larger room for the administration of the local history society and the local history museum and parts of the archive. In terms of the building material used - half-timbering with tiled compartments - the gatehouse represents the transition from pure half-timbering to pure brick construction. It also closes the last structural gap in our courtyard complex on Beuel's Museum Island.

Source: Museum of Local History Beuel