Coltsville should boost Connecticut tourism
Approaching Hartford from the south on Interstate 91, you can't miss the aged, brick factory building, incongruously topped by a blue, onion-shaped, Russian looking dome, that is itself topped by a golden "rampant colt," dancing on the top of the world.
It is, of course, the old Colt Armory, the 19th century home of "the gun that won the West" and the other inventions of the young manufacturing genius, Sam Colt. The dome, recently repaired and repainted, is as bright as the building is drab and forlorn, showing all of its nearly 160 years. But it is also the site of what will one day be a great national park, the home of a renewed Coltsville, Colt's showcase industrial village that helped make 19th century Connecticut the center of American manufacturing genius and prosperity.
If the park, approved by Congress in its final days this month after decades of effort, is a faithful recreation of the original Coltsville, it will be something to see. This is how it looked in the second half of the 19th century, as described in William Hosley's "Colt, the Making of an American Legend:"
Dominated by the "enormous brick armory at the center of a compound that included civic and industrial amenities, commercial, education, social and residential facilities for the workers, a gas works, reservoir and waterworks a farm and produce warehouse, a river port dock and railroad depot, separate facilities for manufacturing gun cartridges and willow furniture and crowning the hillside above, the owner's mansion, Armsmear," the still standing Italian style villa with oriental minarets and domes of steel and glass that will be part of the park.
Sam Colt died young, at 47, in 1862, leaving his wife Elizabeth Jarvis Colt and their young son. The park will be a monument to not only Sam but also to Elizabeth, the nation's first major female entrepreneur. Mrs. Colt took over the armory, rebuilt it after an 1864 fire that halted the production of Union arms during the Civil War, then ran the company for decades. She also became the guardian of her late husband's legacy, building in his honor the Church of the Good Shepherd, with its carvings of revolvers and pistol parts providing ornamentation not often found in churches.
The church will be part of the park, too, along with Hartford's Colt Park, once her property, and the boat-shaped Caldwell Colt Memorial she built in memory of her son, a yachtsman of little other accomplishment, who died at 35. Mr. Hosley calls the odd building "one of the eccentric masterpieces of Victorian American architecture, a triumph of personal exhibitionism."
Also still standing are some of the cottages Sam Colt built for workers he recruited from Potsdam, Germany to make furniture from the willow trees he grew to protect Coltsville from the Connecticut River.
A visitor's center and museum is expected to house a multi-million dollar firearms collection now hidden away in the rarely visited Museum of Connecticut History in the State Library.
It took more than 13 years after its approval for the Lowell National Park to be completed and it will probably be at least that long before this newest national park is ready for visitors. Ultimately, it will be a formidable tourist attraction, a complement to the Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe Houses that date from the same era.
Marketed correctly by Connecticut, Coltsville can help make this a destination state, attracting more visitors and vacationers who will want to explore other historic and entertainment venues in this small state, including the many attractions here in southeastern Connecticut.
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