Fort Interiors

Fort Interiors has had continuous military occupation since its erection in 1852. Its latest occupant, the United States Navy, used the facilities from 1941 to 1997. When the fort was turned over to the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, the rooms were found to have been outfitted with modern heating devices, electrical service, lighting, and dropped suspended ceilings. Some rooms had been adapted to laboratory use with floor-mounted concrete slabs and mezzanines, and they had been subdivided. After debris and modern additions were cleared away, a significant number of the original doors, windows, molding, and fireplace mantels remained, and microscopic analysis of paint-layer cross sections revealed original colors. Many rooms have now been restored to their 1852 appearance through restoration of wall and ceiling plaster, stabilization of wood trim, removal of later floor surfaces attached by thousands of nails to reveal the original wood floors and, in discreet areas, the original finish, and repainting to represent the original color scheme. One room on the left has been left unaltered to show its appearance as an office laboratory during the 1950s. The Loading Room on the right had apparently been used as a brig at some earlier time, when steel bars and doors were added, and one occupant left the signature "Billy Baker – 5 days" at a window. The Navy used the chamber in the northeast bastion as a laboratory, and it has been modified to represent an anechoic chamber that originally existed in another building.

New London, Connecticut · United States