“Nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like houses; parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford,” Herman Melville wrote in his 1851 sea odyssey, “Moby-Dick.”

The novelist wasn’t wrong. Mansions from Melville’s era and even older homes still stand in New Bedford, Mass., roughly 50 miles south of Boston and situated along the Acushnet River on the state’s southern shore. Among those older homes is the Nathan and Polly Johnson House, built in 1800 and the first free home of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Around the turn of the 20th century, many multifamily homes were created to provide housing for the large numbers of immigrants working in the local textile industry.

The city has long since has expanded and modernized to include tracts of single-family homes in the north end and apartment buildings downtown, where much of the new residential development is taking place.

“What’s so nice about the city is that it’s so small,” said Christopher Silva, 64, a New Bedford resident. “You get this feeling of community with people in the city especially because of its historical significance.”