Dedicated on November 6, 1997, and designed by the architectural firm Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum, the library houses more than 44 million pages of personal papers and official documents subject to the Presidential Records Act. What makes this collection unusual is its breadth: Bush held more government positions before the presidency than nearly any predecessor. The archives span his career as a congressman, Ambassador to the United Nations, Chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in China, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. A National Security vault holds classified presidential records in a separate secure area. The library sits on a plaza adjoining the Annenberg Presidential Conference Center and the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, forming an academic complex that connects scholarship to the historical record.

On the library's plaza stands one of the more striking pieces of political sculpture in any presidential museum. The Day the Wall Came Down, a 1996 bronze by artist Veryl Goodnight, depicts horses leaping over fragments of the actual Berlin Wall. The sculpture commemorates the fall of the wall in November 1989, during Bush's presidency -- the event that defined his single term more than any other. Inside, the museum offers something most presidential libraries do not: visitors can fully enter the Oval Office replica, sit behind the president's desk, and take a souvenir photograph. The permanent exhibits draw on the museum's collection to trace Bush's life and public service, while rotating exhibits explore the broader context of his administration and American history.

On October 18, 2005, Union Pacific Railroad unveiled a custom-painted EMD SD70ACe locomotive numbered 4141 in honor of the 41st president. The blue, gray, and white paint scheme mirrored Air Force One. The locomotive served in active freight duty until 2009, was brought back into service, and on December 6, 2018, carried Bush's casket on a funeral train from Spring, Texas to College Station -- one of only a handful of presidential funeral trains in American history. Union Pacific donated locomotive 4141 to the library on November 8, 2019, and it made its final journey to the grounds on March 12, 2021, where it will be permanently displayed in a pavilion between the library and the Annenberg Conference Center. The Bush Foundation has also secured a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter for permanent display and is seeking a retired Boeing VC-25A -- the aircraft that serves as Air Force One.

The library grounds serve as the Bush family burial site, lending the complex a solemnity that most presidential libraries lack. Pauline Robinson Bush, who died of leukemia in 1953 at age three, was originally buried at Putnam Cemetery in Greenwich, Connecticut, but was reinterred at the library in 2000. Barbara Bush was buried here on April 21, 2018, four days after her death. George H. W. Bush followed on December 6, 2018, the same day his funeral train arrived. In December 2019, a life-size bronze statue of Sully -- the service dog who became the president's constant companion during his final six months -- was unveiled near the burial site. The image of Sully lying beside Bush's flag-draped casket in the U.S. Capitol had gone viral just a year earlier.