Industrial

Beacon Mill Village (1853)

Beacon Mill Village in Beacon Falls is an example of a nineteenth century mill village adapted to new use as an apartment complex (in this it is similar to the mill village established by the Cheney Brothers in Manchester). The eight surviving buildings of the Beacon Mill Village complex were built between 1853 and 1916. The Town of Beacon Falls, incorporated in 1871, grew up alongside the factories. The Village was originally home to the American Hard Rubber Company in the 1850s. By the time of the Civil War, the complex housed the factories of the Home Woolen Company, which produced shawls for Union soldiers. This company went out of business in 1880, but the Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe Company, founded in 1898 by George Lewis, later moved into the complex. His son, Tracy Lewis, later served as the company‘s president until his death in 1921. The company, which grew to have offices in Boston, San Francisco and New York, incorporated in Massachusetts in 1915, while production remained in Beacon Falls. That same year, the company hired the Olmstead Brothers, sons of Frederick Law Olmsted, to design a mill town for plant workers. The mill buildings were restored and transformed into an apartment complex in 1986.

Billings & Spencer Company (1893)

Charles Billings and Christopher Spencer were former employees at the Colt Armory who started their own drop-forging shop in Hartford’s Frog Hollow neighborhood in 1872. The Billings & Spencer Company became an important manufacturer of tools. The 1893 Billings & Spencer Company building, at the corner of Russ and Lawrence Streets in Hartford, features a distinctive Romanesque Revival office tower. The building was adapted in the 1980s for use as an apartment building, which is owned by the Melville Charitable Trust.

Clock Tower Mill (1886)

The Clock Tower Mill, originally called the Spinning Mill, was constructed in 1886, on the corner of Forest and Elm Streets in Manchester, as part of the Cheney family‘s mill village complex. The earliest mills of the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company were built in the 1830s along Hop Brook. As steam power superseded water power by the 1880s, the Cheney Brothers began to build in the area north of Hartford Road, starting with the Spinning Mills. The functional mill buildings feature some architectural decorations, including the Spinning Mill’s five-story Italianate clock tower. During World War II, the mill housed the Cheney Brothers’ Pioneer Parachute Co. (founded in 1938). There is an interesting story of a WWII private from Manchester who, about to jump over Normandy, was making a final inspection of his parachute and discovered it had been inspected by his own mother, who worked at the factory! Today the Clock Tower Mill is part of the Cheney Brothers National Historic Landmark District. In an example of adaptive reuse, the structure has been converted to apartments available for rent.

Colt Armory (1865)

The original Colt Armory was built in 1855 and was a central part of Samuel Colt‘s firearms-making empire. Based in the district of Hartford known as Coltsville, the armory was later joined by additional buildings, including housing for workers. The Colt mansion, Armsmear, was also built on a nearby hill, overlooking the factory complex. Three years after Colt’s death, the original armory was destroyed by fire in 1864. It was then rebuilt by Colt’s widow, Elizabeth Colt, using designs by the company’s general manager, General William B. Franklin. The new building was designed to be fireproof and also larger than its predecessor. It was also more decorative, with a design based on the styles of the Italian Renaissance.

The new Colt Armory also carried over the most dramatic feature of the original structure, the blue onion dome with gold stars, topped by a gold orb and a rampant colt, the original symbol of the Colt Manufacturing Company. Today, a gilded fiberglass replica is used, the gilded wood original now being displayed at the Museum of Connecticut History. As for Sam Colt‘s use of the famous onion dome, a distinctive feature easily noted by drivers on I-91, there are different theories concerning its origins, ranging from its being a tribute to his early Russian business contacts, to simply being a dramatic marketing statement which no one would forget. Coltsville is now undergoing plans for adaptive reuse and there is support for transforming the complex into a National Park.