The Greek Revival-style industrial building (similar to the Thomas Macy Warehouse on Straight Wharf) was originally the core of a complex of buildings devoted to oil processing and candle manufacturing, supplying oil for street lamps in London and Paris and lighthouses along the Atlantic coast of the United States.

In 1929, it was purchased by the Nantucket Historical Association to house a collection of whaling artifacts donated by Edward F. Sanderson, a Congregational minister.

Harpoons, lances, blubber hooks, cutting spades, and a whaleboat fitted out for action were enlivened with the whaling tableaux and commentary of “custodian” George Grant.

Space to preserve and exhibit the relics of an earlier age was always at a premium, but Admiral William Mayhew Folger, a descendant of early settler Peter Foulger, left a bequest to the NHA in 1929 that honored his ancestor.

The NHA library and artifact collections were housed in their own dedicated buildings in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, freeing up the Broad Street compound for improvement.