POULSBO – It was, perhaps, mere coincidence.

Poulsbo Historical Society board president Jim Shields reviewed the evolution of the proposed Poulsbo Maritime Heritage Museum and said the historical society had found a site for it. “We’re about ready to pull the trigger on this,” he said, and asked for a show of hands from society members on whether the board should proceed with a lease.

Then his cell phone went off. The ring tone: The theme from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

And downtown Poulsbo will soon have a maritime heritage museum, adding to the cultural flavor of the historic district and providing a home for a growing collection of maritime artifacts, including a restored codfish dory and a Poulsbo boat.

The Poulsbo Maritime Heritage Museum, a branch of the Poulsbo Historical Museum located in City Hall, will open this summer at 19010 Front St. It seems a fitting use for such a building; built in 1909, it was originally a bank and later was the longtime home of the Herald. The building is currently occupied by Gifts of Promise, whose owner is retiring.

The Poulsbo Historical Society board of directors voted unanimously on May 12 to lease the building from Jeff and Diana Nilsen, the owners. The society hopes to someday buy the building from the Nilsens.

The maritime heritage museum site is a short walk from the waterfront, the Port of Poulsbo Marina and one of the last tidal grids in the Puget Sound region. Longship Marine, a destination marine supply store and exchange, is across the street. It will provide a main street presence for the historical society and the Chamber of Commerce, which will rent some space in the museum.

Like bookends, the maritime heritage museum will reside on the north end of downtown, the Poulsbo Marine Science Center the other end.

The site is also a safe anchorage after rough seas trying to find a home. The maritime heritage museum had hoped to occupy the former police station on Hostmark Street, but the city received a purchase offer from a developer. The historical society then negotiated for space in the city-owned marine science center building, but that didn’t work out because of insufficient parking.

Downtown rents were too high or space insufficient; it’s not easy finding a place with doors wide enough to move a dory in, board member Tom Henderson said.

Then, the historical society learned about 19010 Front St. — a concrete structure suitable for a second floor, 1,700 square feet of interior space, and big doors and outdoor space in the back — and were able to reach a handshake agreement with the Nilsens.

According to Shields, the museum will be open seven days a week, staffed by volunteers. There will be a gift shop and, at some point, educational and hands-on events.

The museum will reflect the maritime heritage of this place. At the historical society meeting in the City Hall council chambers, Shields presented a slideshow that showed how life here has always been centered on the sea:

For millennia, Suquamish people fished and clammed here, and reserved in the 1855 treaty the right to continue to do so.

“Salmon was the most important food,” Tom Dailey wrote on the website, Coast Salish Villages of Puget Sound. “The dugout canoe was the primary means of transport.  A typical village was located adjacent to navigable water and composed of a small number of large cedar-planked longhouses — each giving shelter to 30, 40 or more usually related individuals.” A Suquamish village, ho-CHEEB, near the Liberty Bay estuary, consisted of “One or two large [55’ x 150’] buildings … about 4 smaller [25’ x 50’] ones …”

During the settlement era, timber companies set up floating logging camps on what was then Dogfish Bay, Shields said. The earliest residents of Poulsbo built a float in 1886 so a steamer could land here. The first docks were built in 1890. The University of Washington planted oyster beds here for commercial use in 1900. At the site of what is now Liberty Bay Marina, Shields’ grandfather established the Pacific Coast Codfish Company in 1911; here, salted cod brought in the holds of the company’s schooners from Alaska was canned and shipped until 1958.

For almost a century, most jobs to be had were centered on the sea: canning, fishing or logging.

“Our maritime heritage cannot be ignored,” Shields said.

In 2010, Shields and other members of the society set out to preserve that heritage. They restored a Pacific Coast Codfish Co. dory donated by the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle. That dory is on display on the second floor of City Hall. Later, they restored a Poulsbo boat, designed and built by Ronald Young, who designed and built the vessels from around 1930 through the ’60s in a downtown basement shop. The boats cruised at up to 7 knots, with a single-cylinder engine, were relatively affordable, and were easy to trailer.

In 2012, the historical society voted to establish a maritime collection, and the collection quickly outgrew storage and display space.

Henderson said the former bank building is a good place for that collection; made of concrete, there is a lower fire risk.

Kelle Kitchell-Cooper, director of development of The Rockfish Group, a public relations and marketing company located on Front Street, said the maritime heritage museum will build on the art and culture offerings that make downtown appealing to a broader spectrum of people — visitors and residents. (Recent mergers of the artistic and the culinary: Kitsap Mosaics is now Kitsap Mosaic & Bistro, where families can create and dine; and Liberty Bay Books, which now has a Borrowed Kitchen Bakery outlet.)

Kitchell-Cooper said passengers of American Cruise Lines, which stops in Poulsbo on Fridays, participate in historic tours or go to the Suquamish Museum. “By adding to that, [the maritime heritage museum] will increase interest in downtown,” she said. “It will help keep people downtown beyond dinner.”

Aaron Wenholz, a former rigger who bought Longship Marine in 2012, is looking forward to the museum opening across the street from his store. Longship Marine is a consignment store that, if it were not a retail outlet, could be a museum.

The store has nautical equipment and gear from 1,100 consigners, and visitors hail from as near as Puget Sound and as far as Canada and Alaska. During summer, 20 percent of customers are boaters who are moored at the Port of Poulsbo Marina, Wenholz said.

“It’s really a good thing,” he said of the maritime heritage museum. “This is definitely a boater’s town.”

If Longship Marine is any indication, the maritime heritage museum can expect quite a few visitors.

“Nautical stuff is the new trend,” Wenholz said. “Ten years ago, it was not a big deal. Today, a lot of people who come in are fascinated by nautical stuff.”