Winchester Repeating Arms Company, Tract K Shooting Range, 125 Munson Street (rear section), New Haven, New Haven County, CT

Significance: Winchester, perhaps the world's largest sporting arms ammunition manufacturer by World War I with a sporting rifle product line, entered large-scale military production in 1914 with British, Belgian, and Russian contracts. The firm doubled its plant size at this time, including the construction of a six-story factory space on Tract K for British Enfield rifle manufacture. The small firing range, built at the rear of Tract K in 1916, was a testing facility for finished British Enfields and, after 1917, for the American Enfield adapted by the U.S. Army. After the war, Winchester's plant exceeded sporting arms market demands, and Tract K was closed to small arms production or research until 1946, when the firm, by then a division of Olin Corporation, established a research department and remodeled the firing range. Industrial research and quality control, with a nationally-owned photographic section, continued until 1985.
Survey number: HAER CT-28
Building/structure dates: 1916 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: ca. 1946 Subsequent Work