The museum was established on 1 January 1991 to document, preserve, and inform visitors of the history of Estonian architecture and its development today.

The museum began operating in a temporary space at Kooli 7 in Tallinn's Old Town, where the collections were located in the medieval Loewenschede Tower.

[3] The arched cellar of the building, which was completed according to a project drafted by Baltic-German engineer Ernst Boustedt in 1908, was space for salt storage.

During the course of this reconstruction, the structure – which was originally a single storey – was divided into multiple floors with an intermediary ceiling and galleries in order to thus offer a greater number of exhibition spaces possessing different characters.

There are approximately 11500 items in the Archive Collection along with city plans, building projects, architectural drawings, photographs, and manuscripts.