Inset: Engraving of the Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company’s Hartford factory c. Completely destroyed, though, were the areas devoted to producing pistols and revolving rifles, severely crippling the factory’s future output. The powerhouse and several less important buildings were lost, but the factory’s workers and the volunteer Hartford Fire Department managed to prevent the fire from engulfing the west wing, where rifle muskets were being made. This building too would be lost.īy mid-morning, less than two hours after smoke had first been seen, the front half of the armory was a flaming ruin. Soon the fire spread from the eastern wing by a covered bridge to the armory’s office building. At 9 a.m., the star-studded blue onion dome surmounted by a gilt statue of a rampant colt fell through the roof into the already gutted interior. Fueled by flooring saturated with oil used to cool lathes and milling machines, the fire was unstoppable. the entire two upper floors of the armory’s eastern wing were ablaze. Within minutes the roof and its supporting beams were engulfed in flames. “A Day at the Armory of the Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company.” United States Magazine, Vol. bottom: An interior view of the Colt armory’s eastern wing as it appeared in 1857. Employees within the works were immediately dispatched to the attic, and hoses were brought up to douse the fire, However, having discovered the company’s water reservoirs were dry, the workers were forced to flee when the fire exploded from a room used to dry wood for pistol and rifle stocks and ignited the leather pulley belts that drove the machinery in the floors below. The first indications that something was amiss were noticed about an hour and a quarter after the Februshift had begun work at 7 a.m., when workers outside the armory spotted smoke wafting from an attic ventilation window near the southern end of the structure’s riverside wing. These two men were to guide the firm’s operations throughout the war. Root, as president as her brother Richard Jarvis as vice president. Mindful of her late husband’s wishes, she appointed the factory’s superintendent, Elisha K. Minority stock holdings were held by various relatives and trusted associates of the late owner, but none of these was significant enough to affect Elizabeth’s decisions. Following his death at age 47 in January 1872, control passed to his widow, Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt (1826 – 1905). Though the company was ostensibly a public firm, the majority of its stock was held by Samuel Colt. Shortly after the beginning of the Civil War, the armory was substantially enlarged by the addition of a matching building located on the western side of the original. Measuring some 500 feet in length with a width of 60 feet, the armory physically reflected both the wealth of its builder, Samuel Colt, and the prosperity of his business. Upon its completion in early 1856 the Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company’s three-story armory dominated the skyline immediately south of Hartford. Yet in many respects it was typical of any industrial fire. These conditions, combined with the fact that the armory’s water reservoirs, intended for fighting fires, were dry and the cause of the fire unknown, immediately gave rise to rumors of arson or sabotage. It occurred in a factory producing needed war materiel and spread with lightning speed. The Colt Armory fire of 1864 embodied all the characteristics of a modern conspiracy thriller.
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