The Colt Armory is a historic factory complex for the manufacture of firearms, created by Samuel Colt

Samuel Colt

Samuel Colt was an American inventor and industrialist. He was the founder of Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company , and is widely credited with popularizing the revolver. Colt's innovative contributions to the weapons industry have been described by arms historian James E...

. It is located in Hartford, Connecticut

Hartford, Connecticut

Hartford is the capital of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960, it is the second most populous city on New England's largest river, the Connecticut River. As of the 2010 Census, Hartford's population was 124,775, making...

 along the Connecticut River

Connecticut River

The Connecticut River is the largest and longest river in New England, and also an American Heritage River. It flows roughly south, starting from the Fourth Connecticut Lake in New Hampshire. After flowing through the remaining Connecticut Lakes and Lake Francis, it defines the border between the...

, and as of 5 December 2007 is part of the Coltsville Historic District, named a National Historic Landmark

National Historic Landmark

A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...

. The state of Connecticut has been trying to place the complex under the administration of the National Park Service

National Park Service

The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...

 as a National Historical Park

National Historical Park

National Historic Sites are protected areas of national historic significance in the United States. A National Historic Site usually contains a single historical feature directly associated with its subject...

, similar to designation granted the Lowell National Historical Park

Lowell National Historical Park

Lowell National Historical Park is a National Historical Park of the United States located in Lowell, Massachusetts. Established in 1978 a few years after Lowell Heritage State Park, it is operated by the National Park Service and comprises a group of different sites in and around the city of...

, another important site in the history of American industrialism.

The armory was built on a 260 acres (105.2 ha) site beginning in 1855. Low-lying, often flooded meadows were set off from the river by a 2 miles (3.2 km) dike and drained. The dike and earliest armory buildings were completed in 1855, and Colt's mansion Armsmear

Armsmear

Armsmear , also known as the Samuel Colt Home, is a historic house located at Hartford, Connecticut. It was the family home of firearm manufacturer Samuel Colt and is now a National Historic Landmark....

 was constructed the following year on a hill overlooking the armory. Shortly afterwards Colt added 20 six/eight-family houses (10 of which survive) on Huyshope and Van Block Avenues for skilled workers. Colt's 1855 East Armory was almost totally destroyed by a disastrous fire in 1864; only two small outbuildings remain of this original construction (the Forge and the Foundry). The West Armory (built 1861) was demolished before World War II.

After the 1864 fire, the East Armory was rebuilt on its predecessor's foundation, to designs by General William B. Franklin, the company’s general manager and a former U.S. Army engineer, and completed in 1867. It is a 5-story brick structure with brownstone accents, 508 by in dimensions, with its main entrance in the center of a five-bay pavilion projecting 10 feet (3 m) from the main facade. The building is capped with a distinctive onion-shaped, sheet metal dome, painted deep blue with gold stars, and resembling that of the 1855 armory. A gilded ball sits atop the dome, above which is a gilded fiberglass replica of the original "Rampant Colt". (Its gilded wood original is now on display at the Museum of Connecticut History at Connecticut State Library

Connecticut State Library

The Connecticut State Library is the state library for the U.S. state of Connecticut, and is also an executive branch agency of the state. It is located in Hartford, Connecticut....

.)

Four Porter-Allen steam engines drove the armory’s machine tools through a maze of shafts and belts. Mark Twain, who lived in the nearby Mark Twain House

Mark Twain House

The Mark Twain House and Museum was the home of Mark Twain from 1874 to 1891 in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. Before 1874, Twain had lived in Hannibal, Missouri. The architectural style of the 19-room house is Victorian Gothic...

, visited Colt's armory in 1868 and described it thus: "It comprises a great range of tall brick buildings, and on every floor is a dense wilderness of strange iron machines… a tangled forest of rods, bars, pulleys, wheels, and all the imaginable and unimaginable forms of mechanism… It must have required more brains to invent all those things than would serve to stock 50 Senates like ours."

In addition to Colt firearms, the factory produced a number of items under contract for other companies. The most famous of these was a letterpress printing

Letterpress printing

Letterpress printing is relief printing of text and image using a press with a "type-high bed" printing press and movable type, in which a reversed, raised surface is inked and then pressed into a sheet of paper to obtain a positive right-reading image...

press designed by Merrit Gally, known as the Universal. From 1873 to 1902, the Armory manufactured a series of these presses that developed a reputation as the finest hand-fed platen press ever made (a reputation which survives to the present). These presses eventually became known generically as "Colt's Armory" presses, although they were distributed under names including Colt's Armory, Victoria, Hartford, National and Laureate. The fascinating history of the design, production, sales and business battles behind these storied presses was summarized in a 1983 article in the typographic journal Type & Press.

Today the factory complex includes: the Forge Shop and the Foundry (from the original 1855 factory); the East Armory with its distinctive blue onion dome, rebuilt in 1867; the South and North Armories, the Machine Shop, Warehouse, Power Plant, and Garage, built in 1916 to accommodate World War I production; and the World War II Office Building (1942).

External links

• The Colt Revolver in the American West—The Rampant Colt