A long effort by supporters of a Coltsville National Historical Park in Connecticut hit a roadblock when a bill authorizing the project failed to garner the necessary votes in the House. The congressman for the district promises to try again. What do you think about the idea?
Coltsville isn't a household name for most Americans, so we've provided some background on this project in a previous story on the Traveler. In a nutshell, an NPS study of the idea says
The Coltsville Historic District in Hartford, Connecticut, was the site of important contributions to manufacturing technology made by Samuel Colt (1814-1862) and the industrial enterprise he founded, Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company.
Coltsville also is noteworthy because Samuel Colt planned it as a fully-integrated industrial community that includes manufacturing facilities, employee housing, community buildings, and landscape features built largely under the direction of Samuel Colt and his wife, Elizabeth Colt
.
Congressman John B. Larson (D-CT) sponsored a bill (H.R. 5131) "to establish Coltsville National Historical Park in the State of Connecticut, and for other purposes." The tally in the House on September 22, 2010, was 215 "for" and 174 "against," but the bill needed a 2/3 majority for passage under the House rules that applied to the vote.
According to the NPS' Office of Legislative and Congressional Affairs, the bill would "authorize the Secretary to establish a new unit in Hartford, Connecticut, which would include the Colt armaments factory and related buildings, when the NPS had acquired enough land or interest in land to make a unit feasible."
In testimony before the House subcommittee, the Department did not support the bill as introduced, but the Department could support the bill as it was amended by the committee. The amended version provides the National Park Service with the ability to establish the park only after assuring the long-term financial stability of the Coltsville development project.
As envisioned by the bill and local supporters, the proposed park would include a combination of NPS and other public and private ownership, and would require some potentially complex formal agreements between the NPS and a variety of state, local and private entities.
In a statement after the vote, Larson noted, “I am disappointed that in today’s hyper-partisan atmosphere in Washington we can’t even get agreement to create a National Park to preserve one of our nation’s and our area’s most important historic manufacturing sites. This legislation was supported by the Republican Governor of our State and a bi-partisan coalition of local officials. Yet, Republicans in Washington still voted against the legislation, costing Connecticut and the nation jobs and economic development at a time when we can least afford them."
Larson said he would continue to push the measure. According to a member of his staff, he plans to reintroduce the bill, perhaps before the end of the year, using a different legislative procedure that requires a simple majority rather than a two-thirds vote.
There's no question it's a tough political environment these days for any bill that would add to the cost of government operations. Although Larson says the new park would offer economic benefits to the area, opponents cite the impact on NPS budgets.
A Republican website's take on the bill notes, "The NPS, which would be responsible for maintaining the park, is facing a substantial maintenance deficit and collapsing national park infrastructure," and notes the bill "would appropriate $10 million to establish the landmark site as a National Historical Park, managed as a unit of the NPS."
What do you think? Is it time for a park for Coltsville, or is this "park pork" we can't afford?
Comments
Coltsville would be a good addition to the park system--our industrial heritage is underrepresented. When the legislation was proposed, even the conservative National Review, IIRC, had an editorial supporting Coltsville as a historical example of good labor-management relations. From the study findings, Coltsville would also seem to have more integrity than say the fragmented and more costly Steel Industry site proposed in Pittsburgh. Too bad certain politicians feel the need to play games about little things while ignoring the big picture.
Hard to say. I guess I'm not sold on the idea of a unit celebrating the manufacturing of firearms, both because it seems like such a specific historical topic and I don't know that I like the idea of the government creating a park that essentially celebrates personal firearms. Of course the history of firearms in this country is pretty intertwined with more general history, but the idea still makes me uncomfortable and it's not clear why the government needs to manage this, as the study notes.
Both Coltsville and Homestead (steel industry site in Pittsburgh) have integrity problems.
In a site with a great deal more integrity, already in the National Park System, you can go to Springfield Armory national historical park. It has a significant collection, and Thomas Blanchard - inventor of the critical machine in rifle and pistol manufacturing, the Blanchard Lathe - worked there.
But thinking about the significance of the Homestead site, and the famous Homestead Lockout, it makes you wonder if the integrity of the industrial buildings is as much of the point, as the extent to which the Coltsville site has been gutted. Homestead is the landing site on the river where the Pinkerton security guards were sent to storm the Homestead strike headquarters. For a brief time, the workers were triumphant, together with the unforgettable picture of townswomen attacking the guards who they perceived of as threatening the livelihood of their families. That site on the river has significance of place, because that location on the river will always be there. In the same way that the site of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 when the Norman French led the last successful conquest of England will be meaningful forever. Homestead was the turning point of how work gets done in America. It changed workers from skilled trade union workers, to mass labor unions, and was a decisive point in financial people and owners/managers in breaking the individuality of the American worker.
There may not be any other site quite like Homestead in laying out the course of the future of the economic development and social change in the United States. However, the NPS has had significant problems with both the integrity and feasibility issue at Homestead, and has come around with the encouragement of the congressional delegation and the NRA to consider Coltsville.
There are many better examples of paternalistic community development around the United States, for example the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, among others.
The interesting thing about the Congressional 'game' of moving a bill by putting it on the "consent" calendar, which zips it through without much discussion and with NO amendments, is that the complaining congressman and the bill managers in the committee should never have brought the bill up that way if they had not counted the votes in advance. But this year it has become the interest of the Republicans to thwart and stall everything, and then hope voters will blame Democrats when nothing works.
Maybe it is possible the bill managers deliberately let the Coltsville bill take the hit just to make the point at how destructive and stupid opposition in Congress has become, but traditionally you are considered unprofessional to bring something up on "consent" and then lose because you had not counted the votes.
Parkpork. Larson is simply trying to bring some money to his district. I'm a liberal Democrat and I live in Connecticut and there is NO need for this.
I, too, live in Connecticut, just a few towns away from Hartford.
I am also a big NPS fan.
However, I, too, don't think this is worthy of park status. There is really nothing left except for the building, so it wouldn't be a restoration as much as a complete fabrication.
The Colt Building is a historical landmark, to be sure, and should be preserved and turned into something useful (art complex, perhaps), but as an NPS unit, well, the idea falls flat.