Can Coltsville Be a Landmark? A Tale of Integrity

Coltsville’s progress toward National Historic Landmark status hit a roadblock in October when the National Park System Advisory Board’s Landmarks Committee recommended turning down the nomination for Samuel Colt’s famed firearms factory and its worker housing. Several committee members ruled that because of the renovations being done at the site it did not meet the requirement for a “high degree of integrity.” Under the leadership of Robert MacFarlane of Homes for America Holdings, the Armory is being renovated as Colt Gateway, a mixed-use development of residential and commercial space (see CPN, March/April 2003, July/August 2004).

Landmarks Committee members said that dividing the formerly open factory floors eliminated the open spaces that were integral to understanding the building’s historic function and importance.

Landmark designation was opposed by James Griffin, a West Hartford resident who has resisted MacFarlane’s rehabilitation project because he wants to convert the entire East Armory—the section with the eye-catching blue onion dome—into a museum about Colt and his company. At the committee hearing, Griffin submitted a letter purportedly from the chairman of his organization’s board claiming that MacFarlane’s “plans for widespread commercialization of the Coltsville site will … place the property well outside conformity” with landmark standards.

Governor Jodi Rell quickly sent off a letter to the Park Service expressing “bitter disappointment” over the decision and urging the agency to reconsider. Senators Joseph Liberman and Christopher Dodd, and Representative John Larson also joined in. 

 However, Coltsville can still become a Landmark. The full Advisory Board is slated to take up the nomination December 15, and can override the committee’s recommendation. After the Advisory Board, the nomination will go to the Secretary of the Interior for a final decision, and even that decision can be appealed.             J. Paul Loether, Director of the Connecticut Historic Preservation and Museum Division says the state is following the process closely. The agency has requested copies of all materials relating to the October 11 meeting, and agency representatives plan to attend the December meeting.   

The big question is just what the NHL requirement for “integrity” means. Bruce Clouette, who co-authored the National Register nomination for the Colt building in the 1970s and collaborated on the NHL nomination, wrote in an email, “NHL designation requires a ‘high degree of integrity’ but nowhere is it implied that the property must remain unchanged in appearance from its period of significance. To the contrary, the guidelines explicitly acknowledge that a property may be a rehabilitated building and still have a high degree of integrity, provided that ‘historic materials and significant features must have been preserved.’"

 Clouette continues: “Certainly there are those who believe that dividing up historically undivided space, such as a factory interior, ruins it as a heritage resource. However, I would argue that even with a divided interior, one still can easily distinguish the period, scale, and general industrial use of a building. In fact, if you think about it, the original appearance of these spaces was not just a wide-open factory floor but rather a wide-open factory floor packed with row upon row of machinery, with dense belting and overhead shafting. The machinery is to a factory as furniture is to a mansion. BUT, if one is to insist upon open interiors (with or without machinery) to meet the integrity threshold, then I do not see how any former industrial building will qualify for landmark status unless it is a museum. Certainly, no building in private ownership.” 

That the Armory would survive to be considered for NHL status was not at all a sure thing. The complex languished underused and under-maintained for years until MacFarlane and Colt Gateway appeared on the scene, and preservationists around the state have lauded his work. Loether says, “The Colt Gateway project is the most ambitious adaptive reuse project Connecticut has ever seen."

William Hosley, former curator at the Wadsworth Atheneum who put together a major exhibition on Samuel Colt, comments, “Great industrial buildings represent perhaps the single most ‘at risk’ class of historic buildings, especially here in Connecticut. Converting them to new uses is a daunting task and, in my opinion, the MacFarlanes should be knighted for their courage and Colt-like ingenuity in tackling such a difficult task. They are right on the front lines of one of the most daunting challenges in contemporary historic preservation and they are doing something of national importance right in our midst.”

Given a choice between NHL status and a viable rehabilitation that ensures that the Armory will survive for another 150 years, Connecticut preservationists would universally choose rehabilitation. But none of them sees the need for making that choice. As Clouette wrote in The Hartford Courant, “This a problem not just for Connecticut but for the Landmarks program itself. It cannot hope to include the nation’s most significant industrial-heritage resources without acknowledging that some sort of economic use must be found for these properties to survive.” The Park Service has an opportunity now to address this problem.