A Curiosity in Connecticut: The Colt Armory
A National Historic Landmark That You Can’t Visit…Yet
If you’re ever driving into Hartford on I-91, you’ll probably see a large onion dome that looks completely out of place amongst the office buildings and otherwise unremarkable architecture. This bright blue, star-spangled, gold-topped bulb might appear to be modern art, but is actually one of the oldest things in the city—the dome from the top of the Colt Armory.
The famous gun manufacturer Samuel Colt built his original armory in downtown Hartford in 1855. Although many of the buildings have since been demolished, the original complex was akin to a miniature factory town, which were all the rage in the 19th century; in addition to a machine shop and three armory wings, there was a factory building, a warehouse, offices, and twenty workers’ residences. The Colt family’s mansion, called Armsmear, was built on a hill overlooking the whole complex, as per the unwritten law that wealthy employers need a high place from which to survey their lowly workers.
Actually, it seems that Colt was a fair but tough employer—his employees worked long, disciplined hours, but were required to take a long break in the middle of the day. Colt also built a kind of club/lecture hall called Charter Oak Hall, where workers could relax and enrich themselves culturally.
The original East Armory was destroyed by fire in 1864 and rebuilt in brick and brownstone three years later. (The West Armory was demolished sometime before World War II.) The distinctively Russian-looking sheet-metal onion dome—perhaps a nod to Czar Alexander II, a Colt customer—on top of the new armory was built to mimic the original, and was topped with a golden ball and a rearing stallion known as the “Rampant Colt.” The current horse is a fiberglass replica, as the original gilded wood version is displayed in the Museum of Connecticut History.
Mark Twain, who visited the factory in 1868, supposedly said, “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.” I have to include this quote—even though it comes from Wikipedia and therefore may not actually be real—because it represents the Hartford that was an industrial city, a place where things were made and famous authors were impressed by them, and which counted the Colt complex as an integral part of its center.
The Colt Armory is a valuable piece of history, yet it currently sits semi-empty, a complex that has been designated a National Historic Landmark yet is also being developed for apartments and, potentially, office space. There was talk at one time of making it a National Park, but nothing much happened with that. The building is being slowly developed in part, with a few apartments already in existence and more maybe on the horizon…or maybe not. According to a recent article in the Hartford Courant, 129 apartments were planned for the South Armory, but so far only 50 have been built. Some people still hold out hope for that National Park.
I haven’t visited the Colt Armory, because there’s really not that much to visit. You can walk around the neighborhood if you like, look at the outside of the building and the remaining workers’ houses, and even see the outside of Armsmear, but it’s not really like a museum or a historical site. There are no tours and you can’t go inside. For now, that’s a bit disappointing, but maybe in the future, visitors and native Hartford-ites alike will be able to poke around and finally see what’s underneath that giant blue onion.
– Sarah Alender is a Contributor to The Free George.
The Free George is the online magazine and visitors’ guide of Upstate NY, covering things from Albany to Lake Placid, including Saratoga, the Lake George region and the Adirondacks. Check out our City Blogs section for our extended coverage areas as well.