Heritage
The Watervliet Arsenal cast iron building
A building delivered as a kit of iron parts, on the oldest continuously active arsenal in the United States.
On the west bank of the Hudson River, eight miles (13 km) north of Albany, a federal weapons plant has been running since July 14, 1813. The Watervliet Arsenal is the oldest continuously active arsenal in the United States, and it is not a monument: as of 2023 it was making cannon barrels for the M1 Abrams tank. The arsenal became a National Historic Landmark in 1966, and its 142 acres (57 ha) hold one building that matters for another reason. The Iron Building, put up in 1859, is a prefabricated cast iron structure fabricated in New York City.
Why build an arsenal opposite Troy?
The site was chosen in the middle of a war. The land lay at the edge of Gibbonsville, directly across the Hudson from Troy, and geography made the argument: 60 miles (97 km) from Lake Champlain, 140 miles (230 km) from New York City, a short distance by the Mohawk River toward Lake Ontario. In the early stages of the War of 1812, with attacks possible at several ports, ordnance needed an interior base. Decius Wadsworth, the Colonel of Ordnance, set the new post to fixed ammunition and small articles of equipment: gun carriages, drag ropes, ladles, wormers, sponges and shot.
The Department of Ordnance paid $2,585 for 12 acres (49,000 m²) and began construction in the summer of 1813 on fourteen buildings: south and north gun houses, a brick arsenal, two stables, a guard house, the commanding officer’s quarters, a woodshed, two enlisted men’s quarters, a hospital and an office. The post was designated the Watervliet Arsenal in 1817. Ammunition and carriage hardware came first; cannon came much later.
Saddles first, sixteen-inch guns later
Nearly seventy years passed before the arsenal found its main trade. In the late 1880s it became the Army’s first large caliber cannon manufacturer, and production turned from saddles and gun carriages to cannons. Building 110, the “Big Gun Shop,” dates from that period and still carries manufacturing missions; it once produced 16-inch (406 mm) guns for the Coast Artillery Corps. One 16-inch M1920 coast artillery howitzer carries the arsenal’s stamp and the year 1921. A woodcut of about 1895 in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, titled “Forging Ironwork for Gun Carriages at the Watervliet Arsenal, West Troy, N.Y.,” records the trade under the city’s name at the time.
What is cast iron doing on a gun works?
Building 38, the Iron Building, went up in 1859, fabricated by the Architectural Iron Works of New York. The documentation calls it an outstanding example of prefabricated cast iron construction and the only building on the arsenal with a strong degree of Italianate styling. In 1983 the American Society of Civil Engineers designated it a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. The dates, the acreage and the complete run of commanding officers are gathered in the Watervliet Arsenal entry of the free encyclopedia.
A New York foundry trade
Cast iron architecture was, by the 1850s, substantially a New York business. James Bogardus raised his first complete cast iron facade in 1848 and promoted the method in an 1858 pamphlet. Daniel D. Badger’s works in the East Village produced the E. V. Haughwout Building in 1857, and the warehouse streets of SoHo and Tribeca, like the Old City of Philadelphia, filled with painted iron fronts passing for carved stone. The material reached storefronts as well: a cast iron store staircase still stands in Troy, across the river from the arsenal. The virtues suited an arsenal: members cast in a foundry, shipped and bolted together on site, columns more slender than masonry for the same load.
| Year | Work | Foundry or builder |
|---|---|---|
| 1848 | First complete cast iron facade, New York | James Bogardus |
| 1857 | E. V. Haughwout Building, New York | Daniel D. Badger’s iron works |
| 1859 | Iron Building, Watervliet Arsenal | Architectural Iron Works of New York |
Why the museum never reopened
The Iron Building spent its later years as the Watervliet Arsenal Museum, and the museum closed in October 2013 for security reasons. The city government and the Watervliet Historical Society supported a reopening. The Army’s Center of Military History concluded that continued public access inside a secure military base was not possible. The tenant list explains the caution: a Marine Corps recruiting station headquarters sits on the arsenal, and the Army’s Recruiting Battalion Albany moved there from Wolf Road in February 2009.
A forge that gets rebuilt instead of retired
The plant under the landmark status never stopped working. The Benét Laboratories on the site handle product development, improvement, research and testing for artillery engineering. The radial forge, built in the 1970s at a cost of $7 million, was the turning point of the modern arsenal. On June 23, 2023 the arsenal released plans to replace the rotary forge and install an automated paint booth, and on July 31, 2023 Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the $1.7 billion allocation from Congress and the Army.
Read the drawings, then cross the river
The museum door is shut, but the paper trail is public. The Historic American Engineering Record documented the arsenal building by building, and its listings cover more than two dozen structures with photographs, measured drawings and data pages; Building 110 alone was recorded in 78 photographs. Read those sheets first: they are the closest look at the Big Gun Shop available to anyone. Then cross the river: the arsenal faces Troy across the Hudson, and this journal’s notes on the iron still standing in the Capital District start there.
What the encyclopedia holds
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia. Its Watervliet Arsenal article assembles the public record: the 1813 founding, the 142 acres (57 ha), the 1966 landmark designation, the full run of commanding officers from 1813 to the present, and the Historic American Engineering Record entries for the arsenal’s buildings. A short separate article covers the Iron Building itself, built in 1859 and named a civil engineering landmark in 1983.