Walk down William Street toward the whale tail sculpture this month and you will pass a construction fence where the old Hiller Printing building used to stand, a gap in the streetscape that has been there since demolition began. Beyond it, the New Bedford Whaling Museum's brick facade looks the same as it always has. What's happening behind that fence, though, is not a renovation that ends with the block returning to how it looked in 2020. When the work wraps this fall, William Street itself changes for good, and the part that won't come back is the part most residents have been driving on for years: the on-street parking.
How a For-Sale Sign Became a $31.5 Million Project
The expansion traces back to a tip in the summer of 2021, when Tony Sapienza, then chair of the museum's Board of Trustees, told CEO Amanda McMullen that the old Hiller Printing building at 11 William Street might be for sale. The Old Dartmouth Historical Society, which operates the museum, bought it that October for $1.5 million. Nineteen donors put up $1.1 million in three weeks to make the purchase possible, a fast, local vote of confidence in a building most passersby probably assumed was just another commercial storefront.
That purchase became the seed of a much larger campaign. By the time Mayor Jon Mitchell and museum leadership marked the project's public "first door" milestone in June 2025, about $25.5 million of the $31.5 million goal had been raised, roughly 85 percent of it from private donors, with a $3 million contribution from the city through American Rescue Plan Act funds. Construction on the new building began that July, with the museum estimating 14 to 16 months of work and a fall 2026 completion, which puts the finish line right about now.
What the New Building Actually Adds
The old Hiller building is gone. In its place, a new 20,000-square-foot structure, designed by the Boston firm Machado Silvetti, will serve as the museum's new front door.
| Before | After (fall 2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Main entrance | 18 Johnny Cake Hill | New building on William Street |
| Second-floor exhibition space | About 2,200 square feet | 6,000 square feet, described as the largest in New England south of Boston |
| William Street frontage | Commercial building, on-street parking | Ground-floor cafe, retail, glass-enclosed community room, no on-street parking |
| Total museum footprint | Roughly two-thirds smaller | Expanded by about two-thirds |
The ground floor of the new building will hold a welcome area, an expanded gift shop, a glass-enclosed community gathering space, and a cafe. The redesigned plaza between the two buildings adds a wider, accessible crosswalk connecting old and new, along with new pavement, trees, and bike racks.
The Part That Doesn't Reopen
Here is the detail that separates this from an ordinary construction project: McMullen has said the museum intends to remove all on-street parking on William Street once the work is done, replacing it with what she's described as a "city square feel." That is a permanent design decision, not a temporary construction inconvenience. Residents who have been treating the fenced-off block as something to wait out, expecting curbside spots to return once the machinery leaves, should recalibrate. The street is being redesigned as a pedestrian gathering space with greenery and open pavement, not restored to the mixed traffic-and-parking corridor it was before 2021.
For anyone who has parked on William Street to grab a coffee or duck into the museum for an hour, that changes the calculus going forward. The nearest garage option, Elm Street Garage at 51 Elm Street, sits about two blocks from the museum and will likely become the default rather than the backup.
A Time Capsule Under the New Floor
One detail from the project is worth knowing even if it has nothing to do with parking. In May 2026, New Bedford Public Schools contributed a 32-gigabyte SD card packed with photographs and records documenting the district's students, schools, and activities. That digital time capsule will be placed under the new addition currently under construction on William Street, meant to stay there for future generations to find. It is a small gesture, but it's the kind of thing that only surfaces if you're actually following the project rather than glancing at a rendering online.
Downtown Doesn't Pause for a Construction Fence
None of this has slowed the rest of downtown's calendar. AHA! Night, the free, second-Thursday arts and culture event that draws more than 60 downtown partners each month, ran its August installment on the 13th with the theme "Summer in the Seaport." Scallopalooza was the marquee draw, but the night's four "AHA! Moments" spread the crowd across the district: a J&J Art Exhibition by James Ainsworth and John McCorkle Parker at Shimmer on Union Street, a drawing workshop led by illustrator Zulay Holland Perez at JNSQ Home on Spring Street, the Buttonwood Brass Band performing at the New Bedford Harbor Hotel, and an AHA! After Dark lineup spilling into Rose Alley, Bento's Bar and Grille, and the Pour Farm Tavern.
The point is not that these venues are new. It's that a fenced-off block a few streets over hasn't dented the rhythm of a downtown that has been running this same second-Thursday format for more than two decades. If you've been avoiding William Street because of the construction and assuming the rest of downtown is similarly disrupted, it isn't.
What to Actually Expect This Fall
If the museum holds to its original estimate, completion lands somewhere in the September-to-November window, roughly 14 to 16 months after the July 2025 start. That means the fencing you're walking past this week is likely in its final stretch rather than its opening act. When it comes down, expect a new entrance facing William Street, a cafe and community room where the Hiller building once stood, and a plaza built for foot traffic rather than parallel parking.
For residents downtown, that's a genuine shift in how the block functions day to day, not just how it looks. The construction has been loud and visible for over a year. The quieter, more lasting change is the one that shows up after the fences are gone: a street built to be walked, not parked on.
If you're weighing what a changing downtown means for property values or timing a move in New Bedford, Robert Kinlin has spent decades reading exactly these kinds of shifts across the South Coast and Cape Cod. Let's Connect.
