Gun manufacturing ended in New Haven on Jan. 17, 2006. That day, U. S. Repeating Arms, the maker of Winchester guns, announced that it would close its factory at 344 Winchester Avenue in New Haven. The Winchester gun, which had been produced in New Haven since the 1860s, lost its place within the city; the plant’s 200 employees lost their jobs.

Or maybe the end began much earlier, in 1979. That year, workers at the Winchester plant, then located in a larger complex down the street, went on strike. The factory had been losing money for some time, but the strike, which lasted for six months, compounded those losses. Olin Corporation, the company that owned Winchester arms, then decided to sell its New Haven operation. (Several Winchester managers purchased it, creating U.S.
Repeating Arms.)

Some might identify the start of the decline at a different point. In 1931, Olin purchased Winchester after the New Haven company failed to pay its debts. In City: Urbanism and its End, his 2003 book on New Haven, Yale Professor Douglas Rae writes that, after the sale, “never again would Winchester be so well-grounded an element of the city as it had
once been.”

The Winchester company, as Rae wrote, certainly had been “well-grounded” within New Haven: Around 1915, the factory complex occupied 75 acres north of Ingalls Rink, according to the National Historic Register report on the area. The company also served as the economic anchor for the area; Rae reports that during the world wars, 21,000 people worked at the factory.

But after World War I ended, sales fell heavily. This led Winchester to diversify. The company began to manufacture sporting equipment, camping and fishing gear, even ice skates. Winchester also purchased another New Haven manufacturer: A.B. Hendryx, which was “once the world’s largest manufacturer of birdcages,” according to Rae. Still, despite these and other acquisitions, the company continued to lose money during the interwar period.

The Winchester factory that closed in 2006 had little in common with its predecessors: It occupied a new building just north of the old complex, and, as the New York Times reported, it had just 200 employees. But the old factory structures remained. Then last year, three companies—Forest City, a large real estate development company; Science Park Development Corporation, a nonprofit that supervises development of the science park area; and Winstanley Enterprises, a Connecticut based development company—started refurbishing the abandoned factories. The first phase will create office space, while later phases will create loft apartments, said Abe Naparstek, who leads the project for Forest City. Federal tax credits for historic buildings made the project financially feasible. (The buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.)

New Haven start-up Higher One will occupy the office space in the Winchester factory, said Shoba Lemoine, who leads media relations at the company. (Higher One allows universities to outsource financial aid disbursements.) The company has grown rapidly since three Yale grads founded it in 2000; but the founders decided to stay in New Haven. “The founders felt like Higher One is a homegrown company,” Lemoine said. The company hopes to move into their new office space in January,
she added.

Elements of factory’s interior will obviously change: Neparstek described a shooting range on the third floor of the factory that contained a sand pit with “literally thousands of bullets.” But the red brick exterior will be preserved. Neparstek also said new windows were being installed that were close to the originals. (Leoni W. Robinson designed the buildings in the early 1900s.) Pedro Soto, president of the New Haven Preservation Trust, summed up the historical significance of the project in his testimony in support of the Winchester project: “It is a win for history, as this important story of New Haven’s past will live on in these structures.”