Off Like a Shot
A developer steps forward to rejuvenate Hartford's historic Colt Armory.
By Tricia Vita | Online Only | Feb. 28, 2003
The Colt Armory, built in 1850 and rebuilt in 1866 after a fire
Credit: Courtesy of the Antiquarian & Landmarks Society, Hartford
When David Glass's gourmet baking business outgrew his suburban Connecticut home 20 years ago, he moved lock, stock, and cake batter into the historic Hartford factory complex where Sam Colt made the guns that won the West. At the time, Colt's Firearms Manufacturing Company still occupied the East Armory, whose blue onion dome has been a beacon to travelers since the 1850s.
After the gunmaker moved to West Hartford in 1994, the deteriorating buildings faced an uncertain future. "It looked worse and worse all the time. We almost moved last year," says Glass, who is among the 110 entrepreneurs and artists at work in the World War I-era South Armory, one of 14 buildings on the 17-acre National Register-listed site.
The famous Colt dome
In late January, Hartford was abuzz with the news that Homes for America Holdings, a Yonkers, N.Y.-based developer with an admirable track record for rehabbing undervalued properties, had purchased the long-neglected property. Their $110 million Colt Gateway project will transform the 755,000-square-foot complex into more than 300 apartments and 123,000 square feet of commercial space. Museums, gardens, and a visitors center for a proposed national park are also part of the plan.
"Colt is an iconic figure, like Henry Ford in Detroit," says Bill Hosley, author of Colt: The Making of an American Legend and director of Hartford's Antiquarian and Landmarks Society. "This is somebody whose vision and powers of perseverance and organization-building transformed the world of his generation in a way that still has residual benefits for the people who live here now." Hosley, a passionate advocate for the preservation of Colt's Armory since the 1980s, voices confidence in its new owners: "We've got a real professional group on the line. Everything they're saying about their reasons for being here and their interests in this project completely ring true."
Construction is slated to begin in late summer in the South Armory, where 70 percent of the tenants live and work. Homes for America will install up-to-date heating and cooling systems and replacement windows with historically accurate "Hartford green" mullions. "We wanted to ensure residents are taken care of first and that current tenants can remain here at Colt during the comprehensive rehabilitation," says Robert MacFarlane, Homes for America's chief executive officer, who credits the tenants with keeping the building alive over the past 20 years.
"Early on, when we talked to lenders, they would ask me, 'How do you know anyone would live there?' My response was, 'They already do,'" says MacFarlane, whose affinity for old mills goes back to his boyhood in Fall River, Ma., where "you could walk down the street and visit seven different mills in a matter of minutes."
Hoping to revitalize its capital city, the state is building a $771 million convention center, retail hub, and hotel complex called Adriaen's Landing. Scheduled to be completed in two years, the project has acted as a catalyst for residential construction. In addition to the Colt Gateway, the Hartford Business Journal cited seven major projects, including the $43 million conversion of the former Sage Allen department store, among "Greater Hartford's Biggest Developments of 2002."
Historic photo of Armsmear
Credit: Antiquarian & Landmarks Society
In the 1850s, Sam Colt transformed Hartford's South Meadows' floodplain into his "industrial paradise": a brick armory, gas works, a reservoir, waterworks, warehouses, docks, and depots, as well as factories that produced machine parts, gun cartridges, and willow furniture. In Coltsville, workers' housing ranged from one-and two-family residences and boarding houses for workers to the Colts' mansion, Armsmear, now a retirement home.
When Sam Colt died in 1862 at age 47, his wife, Elizabeth, inherited his industrial empire and fortune—worth today's equivalent of $300 million—and ran the business for the next 40 years. It was Elizabeth who rebuilt the main armory in 1866, after the original 1850s factory was torched by arsonists during the Civil War. "The building that's there now was the first fireproof industrial building in America," Hosley says. "It had a lot of architectural flourishes that were not present in the previous building. It was an architectural tour de force."
In the hopes that Congress will add Coltsville to the National Park system in three years, developers plan to restore everything to the National Park Service's standards. Architect Tai Soo Kim's plan places the Colt Legacy Museum, celebrating Sam and Elizabeth Colt and the growth of industry, on the first floor of the East Armory, along with a visitors center and National Park Service offices.
Two additional museums, tentatively called the Samuel Colt Heritage Museum and the Connecticut First Inventions Museum, would be housed in historic foundry buildings, fronted by a central green and a display of industrial machinery sculptures. According to Hosley, the museums would showcase $100 million worth of Colt firearms and other artifacts of the industrial revolution in the Connecticut Museum of History, the State Library, and other venues.
Colt Gateway also connects the armory to the neighborhood, the riverfront, and Adriaen's Landing with a new road and pedestrian walkway. Tai Soo Kim envisions a traffic circle graced by a monument to Elizabeth Colt providing "a visual orientation point between the Colt complex and downtown."
The much-vaunted "connectivity" of the plan strikes a chord with David Glass, who fondly recalls the downtown Hartford of his boyhood, when "it was kind of fun to walk around." Asked if he plans to stay on at the armory, Glass says, "We hope so. The new owners have a good reputation." Then he adds: "You could walk downtown from here. It's not a great walk, but it will be."
For more information, visit the Homes for America Web site.
Tricia Vita is a freelance writer who divides her time between New York City and an 1850s mill conversion in Norwich, Conn.
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