The history of the Colt Building, as told to me by our very own resident historian and total badass- Kaitlyn Oberndorfer – and supplemented with a hodge-podge of my own somewhat less rigorous research . (pic goes here)
The Colt Armory has had 9 lives. What follows is an abbreviated version those many lives, and a proposal for its final iteration.
1850’s: Samuel Colt invents the first revolver: a gun which has a “mechanism that [enabled it] to be fired multiple times without reloading.” (History.com). However, he has nowhere to manufacture his new invention, so he builds this very building: The Colt Building. Mr. Colt builds the gun factory beside the river to make shipping the guns easy and to harness the power of the river – this very building that we are standing in! For its time (the Gilded Age) it is considered a big deal. Colt also builds various other structures in the vicinity, now known as Coltsville. The white brick buildings were tenements built to house Colt factory workers. They Hartford also considered themselves to be a “big deal” – they called themselves the “richest city in the nation” even though that wasn’t technically true. The guns are shipped all over the country – all over the world, really – and they are prized because of their ability to reload quickly and win battles. They become extra popular for this reason, and they are the weapon of choice for American Soldiers, who use them to brutally massacre scores of Native Americans in the Plains Wars. This was an act of genocide. Samuel Colt’s invention facilitated this genocide.
1860’s: The Civil War begins in 1861. Anyway, in 1862, Samuel Colt passes away.(of what? disease). In 1864, the factory burns down. There are two theories about why: 1) Gunpowder + fire +poorly regulated factory = inferno. 2) southern arsonists came up from the south to burn the factory and weaken northern arms production in order to improve their chances of winning the war. However, it didn’t work. The Civil War ends in 1865, and we all know who won. After the war ends, Elizabeth Colt (Samuel’s widow) starts the rebuild of the factory. Unfortunately, she also loses her son around this time. In her mourning, she decides to build a memorial to her husband and son: The Good Shepherd. An active congregation to this day, the church attracts members from the Greater Hartford area and beyond. Edward Tuckerman Potter, the same man who designed the Mark Twain House, also designed this church. According to the National Park Service, “The ceiling of the Church is painted blue and has gold star embellishments which was common for Episcopalian Churches at the time, but it echoes the Blue Dome that sits atop the East Armory.” Elizabeth’s husband and son are buried alongside her in the Cedar Hill Cemetery of Hartford.
1900’s
2000’s
Additional Research:
Colt Building Article
1800’s
- Samuel Colt
- 1836 Colt patent the first revolving cylinder gun in Paterson, New Jersey (Simon). The firearms production was slow and essentially failed due to the challenging economy and struggle of starting a business. However, Colt remained hopeful and in 1846 he received a letter from Samuel Walker, a Texas Ranger, who had successfully used Colt’s gun in combat and raved it as the “weapon of advantage on the Great Plains” (Simon).
- Coltsville
- In the summer of 1855, began the construction of the brownstone armory likely to be designed by Octavius Jordan.
- Colt’s Armory was a tremendous factory that quickly received international attention for its unique structure and machine-based manufacturing. In the brick of his success, and initiating an expansion to the armory, his triumph slowly turned to tragedy as he passed away in 1862 leaving his industry to Elizabeth (Simon).
- To much further dismay, the Colt industry suffered when the factory was burned to the ground who many believed to be by Southern arsonists during the Civil War in 1864.
1900’s
2000’s
Fire on third floor -sprinklers went off. Everything from the past 300 years rained down on students. To quote Mr. Chanese it smelled like “everything terrible” – rats, excrement, urine – evertying you’d imagine. Students hd to have school in a different building for hte rest of hte year
Today: The
Pipe burst incident when it used to be GHAA middle
