Eli Whitney Museum

Eli Whitney, Sr. came to the site in 1798 specifically in order to use the water's power for running machinery; sixty-two years later his son turned the river into the first public water supply for the city of New Haven. For some decades thereafter, the river continued to provide power not only for the Armory's machinery, but also for pumping its own water into the network of pipes reaching New Haven's buildings and hydrants. Eventually it gave way, as a power source, to steam engines and electric motors, but it continues to this day to supply water for the city.

Of Ithiel Town's 1820 lattice-truss bridge design, Eli Whitney wrote "its simplicity, lightness, strength, cheapness & durability, are in my opinion such as to render it highly worthy of attention." A reconstruction of the Town Bridge crosses the Mill River on the Whitney site.

The Eli Whitney barn, built in 1816, was the centerpiece of the Whitney farm. It was the focus of agricultural activities which supplied the boarding house kitchen and provided shelter for the draft animals used at the Armory.

Eli Whitney, Sr. came to the site in 1798 specifically in order to use the water's power for running machinery. Sixty-two years later his son turned the river into the first public water supply for the city of New Haven.

Four industrial archeological studies of varying scope have been made at the Whitney Armory site in order to learn about the manufacturing processes that were carried on at the site during its use as a small arms factory in the nineteenth century.

The buildings on the west side of Whitney Avenue had a primarily social rather than a manufacturing function. The Boarding House, now home to the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, is the only residential structure that survives.

In 1804, Eli Whitney constructed a forge. He used traprock quarried just 500 yards uphill from the site. The forge was the first and largest of the five buildings that Whitney Sr. constructed on the east side of the Mill River.