Just off Interstate 91 near Hartford, Connecticut is an architectural oddity that would look more at home in Moscow’s Red Square than alongside a placid section of the Connecticut River. Visible from the road is a giant dome in the shape of an onion, colored bright blue, emblazoned with gold stars, and topped with a statue of a rampant horse.
Underneath that blue dome lies the abandoned ruins of a factory once owned by a man who changed American history, the innovator of the revolver, Samuel Colt. Sprawling around the crumbling red brickwork of the old Colt’s Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company, once the largest private armory in the world, are the remnants of Coltsville, the utopian village he built for his workers.
A model of 19th century industrial paternalism, Coltsville included a church, a social hall for dances and lectures, workers’ housing, a giant landscaped park home to deer and peacocks, sculpted botanical gardens, and thousands of feet of greenhouses filled with tropical fruit and flowers. Samuel Colt felt such responsibility for the welfare of his workers outside the factory that he went so far as to build a tiny German village for his skilled craftsmen from Germany, complete with a beer hall and ski chalets.
Today the condition of Coltsville is somewhere between Chicago’s celebrated Pullman Historic District, the first model industrial community in America, and Henry Ford’s abandoned rubber plantation utopia, Fordlândia, which is decaying in the Brazilian jungle. Whilst Pullman’s village was effortlessly designated a National Park, Coltsville faced years of struggle to receive similar landmark status, due almost entirely to what was produced there.
Guns have long been a divisive subject, and plans to turn the industrial community into a National Park were championed ever since the Colt company vacated the premises without success, and the plant was allowed to fall into ruin. However, after nearly two decades, Coltsville finally received congressional approval to become a national park in December 2014. The plans call for “a Coltsville National Historical Park dedicated to the accomplishments of Samuel Colt and the role that his firearms and factory played in the Industrial Revolution.”
Parts of the old east armory are already being renovated for what will be a 10,000-square-foot museum and visitor center. Other sections of the plant will be made into apartments, offices and schools, with apartments already rented in part of the old south armory, alongside a school for art and design.
Yet the future of Coltsville remains uncertain. The old finishing shop, blacksmith’s, and foundry remain in an advanced state of dilapidation. The workers’ housing is suffering from years of neglect. Large tracts of industrial wasteland lead the way to the rundown remnants of the Alpine chalets of the German-themed section, Potsdam. But the historic park, church, memorial hall, and Armsmear itself are still focal points in the community created by Samuel and Elizabeth Colt over 150 years ago.