[4] The museum's complex consists of several contiguous buildings housing 20 exhibit galleries and occupying an entire city block within the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, although operated independently.

[5] The museum also houses a collection of fine art, including works by major American artists who lived or worked in the New Bedford area, such as Albert Bierstadt, William Bradford, and Albert Pinkham Ryder, as well as a collection of locally produced decorative art, glassware, and furniture associated with the rise of New Bedford as a whaling port in the 19th century.

On January 7, 1903, Ellis L. Howland, a news reporter for the Evening Standard, presented a paper urging the establishment of a historical society and a museum:

I believe that the need of a historical society arose not recently but generations ago when the history of New Bedford and vicinity commenced.

Today we are suffering from the omission and if it is in the least deplorable it will be doubly a breach of our duty toward posterity to allow the lack to exist any longer ...

[6]On 22 July 1903, the 100 founding constituents of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society selected William W. Crapo, a local lawyer and congressman, as their president.

At first, the museum rented rooms to display and store artifacts in the Masonic Lodge on the corner of Pleasant and Union Streets.

In 1906, Henry Huttleston Rogers donated the Bank of Commerce Building on Water Street to the ODHS for the purpose of establishing a museum.

The museum features a twenty-minute short film titled The City that Lit the World courtesy of the National Park Service.

It explores themes related to religion, geography, and maritime commerce, which combined to influence the colonial growth of southeastern Massachusetts and the ultimate success of the port of New Bedford, which surpassed Nantucket as the US's largest whaling center around 1827.