Harpers Ferry Armory

Along with the Springfield Armory, it was instrumental in the development of machining techniques to make interchangeable parts of precisely the same dimensions.

The entrance was close to the center of town, with its train station and hotels, and the bridge, the B & O Railroad Potomac River Crossing.

The upgrades formed a well-integrated functional unit that improved the flow of work from one stage of production to the next.

[7] All the expansions of the armory were done on heavy stone foundations and included cast-iron framing in the general style of "factory Gothics" architecture.

[7] In addition, more people were employed to work at the armory than before: the labor force increased from a minuscule twenty-five in 1802 to about four hundred workers in 1859.

While Virginia was still in the Union, the armory regularly shipped manufactured weapons and material throughout the United States.

However, once the Civil War began, the national armory became a vital control point for both the Confederates and the Union.

Close to the beginning of the war on April 18, 1861, just a day after Virginia's conventional ratification of secession, Union soldiers, outnumbered and deprived of reinforcements, set fire to their own armory in an attempt to thwart the usage of it by an advancing Virginian Confederate militia numbering 360 men in all.

[citation needed] Two weeks later, the Confederates abandoned Harpers Ferry, while also confiscating what was left in the Armory and burning the rest of the remaining buildings.

[7] During the Civil War, the armory became a site of great strategic importance because it was located very close to the Mason-Dixon line, or the border between the free and the slave-holding states.

From there, it was moved to the place it was the longest, and where it was most honored: Storer College, a school established for freedmen in Harpers Ferry, which also was given by Congress the Arsenal managers' housing, set back on Camp Hill.

The Fort remained at Storer until after the College closed in 1955, contributing greatly to Harpers Ferry's role as a destination for African-American tourists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.