In February 1926, the Austin Public Library opened at 819 Congress Avenue in a rented room above the office of newspaper Pressler & Ziller.

In December of the same year, Austin's first library building, an 1,800 square feet (170 m2) wood-frame structure, opened at West 9th and Guadalupe Streets.

Bubi Jessen and Peter Alidi painted the tracery frescoes on the ceiling of the arched loggia on the north side of the building.

At that time, the newly formed Austin History Center Association consolidated community support to renovate the old central library building to house the expanding Austin-Travis County Collection.

[8] In 1972, Austin voters passed a $6 million bond for a new central library to be built on an adjacent site at West 8th and Guadalupe.

John Henry Faulk, a local writer and free speech advocate who would be the building's namesake, was the keynote speaker at the dedication ceremony on August 26, 1979.

[12] The building is part of the city's extensive redevelopment of the former Seaholm Power Plant site,[13] east of the intersection of Lamar Boulevard and Cesar Chavez Street.