Byron Township Hall was built in 1876. Byron Center had been platted four years earlier from the Samuel S. Towner farm at the geographic center of the township. The hall housed the township library until 1963 and government offices until 1986. Beginning in 1877, the International Order of Odd Fellows held a ninety-nine-year lease on the building’s second story. In 1896 William Jennings Bryan, the “silver-tongued orator,” spoke here while campaigning as the Democratic presidential candidate, and Gerald R. Ford often met here with constituents during his thirteen terms as Michigan’s Fifth District Congressman. The building also served as a forum for political speeches and as space for dances, weddings, meetings, and church services. The Byron Center Historical Society purchased and restored it in 1986, and it became the Byron Township Historical Museum in 1987.