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The Later Whitney Armory and Eli Whitney Jr.
After Eli Whitney’s death in 1825, his nephews Philos Blake (1791-1871) and Eli Whitney Blake (1795-1886) took over the operations of the Armory. Whitney had supported the Blake brothers in their education and invited them to help him run the Armory starting in the 1810s.
The Blake brothers were also inventors in their own right: they created the first American mortice lock together in 1833, E.W. Blake patented a machine to crush stone for roads in 1858, and Philos Blake patented the first modern corkscrew in 1860. The Blakes left the Armory in 1835 to set up their lock-manufacturing firm, Blake Brothers, which pioneered New Haven’s architectural fittings industry.
Eli Whitney’s own son Eli Whitney Jr. was born in November 1820 and was only four years old when his father died. In 1841, he completed his education at Princeton and returned to New Haven to take over the Armory, which had been languishing after his father’s death and his cousins’ departure. He secured a government contract for over 20,000 rifles and also began manufacturing guns for the civilian market. In 1843, he collaborated with Samuel Colt to produce the first Colt Revolvers. Once that contract had ended, the Whitney works continued to produce their own successful line of handguns.
Under Whitney Jr., the Armory site was to meet the demands of contemporary manufacturing, including the introduction of steam power and the use of steel. This included the construction of a new main Armory building in 1860 after an explosion razed the original structure.
In 1860-61, Whitney Jr. also oversaw the building of a dam across the Mill River on the Armory property. This dam created Lake Whitney, with the aim of increasing waterpower at the site and providing drinking water for New Haven. The water was supplied by the New Haven Water Company, also founded by Whitney Jr. in 1861.
In 1888, Eli Whitney Jr. sold the Armory to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. He died in 1895.
After the Whitney Armory
The Winchester Repeating Arms Company’s interest in the Eli Whitney Armory was not the property, but the company’s knowledge and innovations. They phased out manufacturing operations on the site by 1900 in favor of their own factory north of New Haven, which was much larger, more modern, and connected to the railway line.
The New Haven Water Company continued to grow, and a filtration plant was erected across Whitney Avenue in 1902. The company owned the Armory site, leasing its manufacturing buildings to later tenants while also maintaining pumping and filtration for the City of New Haven.
In 1904, the Acme Wire Company was founded by Victor M. Tyler, Secretary of the Southern New England Telephone Company, and Edgar L. Hartpence, who had previous experience in wire manufacture and sales. They rented the former Armory as their factory. Electrical wiring and telephones, two new innovations of the period, both demanded large amounts of well-made insulated wiring, and the Acme Wire Company met that demand. The company was so successful that it outgrew the Armory site within a decade and moved to another part of New Haven, where it remained in operation for many years.
The next occupant of the Armory site was the Sentinel Stove Company, an innovative manufacturer of gas stoves. However, the company did not survive the first World War, when the metal they needed to make stoves was instead being used for the war effort.
In 1918, the Armory property was leased by J. Allen Heany, a scientist and inventor who dreamed of creating a site for research and invention inspired by Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park. Heany’s interests were wide-ranging. He had already had success creating electrical devices for the new automobile industry. At the Whitney site, Heany pursued innovations in asbestos insulation and insulated wiring. By 1930, he was interested in materials engineering, creating high-grade industrial substances for use in production machinery. One of these, Heanium, is still a highly successful industrial ceramic coating. Several of the companies Heany founded to produce and promote his innovations continue in operation today. Heany Industries manufactured Heanium at the Armory site until 1979 before moving to other, more modern premises. After this, the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop expanded into the remaining industrial buildings on the site.