Along the Connecticut River in Hartford, Samuel Colt created the Colt Armory, the historic factory complex for the manufacture of firearms that spreads out ahead of you. Here, on a 260-acre site first developed beginning in 1855, low-lying, often flooded meadows were held back from the river by a two-mile dike and drained so the armory could rise. The dike and the earliest armory buildings were completed in 1855, and Colt built his mansion, Armsmear, the following year on a hill overlooking the works.
Around the site Colt added 20 six- and eight-family houses on Huyshope and Van Block Avenues for skilled workers; ten of those houses survive. The East Armory of 1855 was almost totally destroyed by a disastrous fire in 1864; only two small outbuildings remain of that original construction, the Forge and the Foundry. The West Armory, built in 1861, was demolished before World War II, and after the 1864 fire the East Armory was rebuilt on its predecessor’s foundation.
As of 2008 this place is part of the Coltsville Historic District, a National Historic Landmark District, and it is slated to become part of Coltsville National Historical Park now undergoing planning by the National Park Service. Find the Forge and Foundry, the only pieces of the original 1855 armory to survive the 1864 fire.