In 1913, the Kovrov Zemstvo administration proposed to the Zemstvo district assembly to create a local history museum. However, this idea was not realized, and soon the First World War began. In 1919, the Kovrov public once again considered the creation of a museum. In the midst of the civil war, doctor A. V. Didrichs founded the first public museum with a medical and educational focus.

In the 1920s, a branch of the Vladimir Scientific Society was established in Kovrov to study the local area. By 1927, it had 42 members who initiated the creation of a museum. That same year, the Kovrov district council of Soviets decided to establish it. The "Historical-Revolutionary Museum" was located in the Ilyinskaya chapel, and its foundation was a department dedicated to the heroes of the revolution and the achievements of socialist construction.

In September 1935, the City Council allocated a plot of 800 m² around the chapel for an agro-botanical garden. In the fall, a plan was drawn up and the area was laid out, and in the spring, the garden was filled with plants. This botanical garden, the first in the Vladimir region, grew more than 80 species of plants, both local and brought from afar.

In March 1942, the museum burned down, although its activities had been suspended since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Ekaterina Emelyanovna Nikitina, director of the Kovrov Local History Museum from 1945 to 1957, effectively created a new museum. She eliminated illiteracy in the Kovrov district, oversaw museums in the Ivanovo industrial region, and restored the Kovrov museum, returning it the building of the Church of John the Warrior and partially lost exhibits.

In September 1960, Karina Georgievna Yakushina became the director of the museum. In 1963, the authorities decided to close the museum, transferring the building to a trading organization, while part of the exhibits went to the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve. However, after the intervention of the Regional Committee of the Communist Party, the museum was restored and received a building at 51 Pravda Street. The new exhibition opened on September 1, 1964.

From May 29, 1974, to February 3, 1989, the museum was called the Kovrov branch of the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve. During this period, its attendance and income significantly increased. In 1975, the museum moved to the building of the former City Party Committee, where it remains to this day. Since February 3, 1989, all branches of the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve, including Kovrov, were granted the status of independent city and district museums. Since then, the museum in Kovrov has been called the Historical-Revolutionary Museum, and since 1993, it has been a municipal cultural institution "Kovrov Historical and Memorial Museum."