On the main quad at Trinity College in Hartford, two 9,000-pound Dahlgren guns have stood since 1950. They were once mounted aboard the USS Hartford, the flagship of Admiral David Farragut during the Civil War, and they now serve as a memorial to the college’s Civil War history. 

The guns’ journey to campus began in 1898, when the City of Hartford placed four of the ship’s cannons at the corners of the State Capitol grounds. In 1949, the college asked to borrow two of them as a Civil War memorial, and the city loaned them from its storage yard. On November 24, 1950, they were placed on the school’s quad facing Broad Street, where they have remained ever since. Trinity’s buildings and grounds team later rebuilt their carriages in white oak to match the originals, a reminder that the guns have always had careful caretakers. 

Recently, the cannons needed to move in order to build new wooden stands. There was no room for error, Meyer’s rigging team carefully planned and executed the project, balancing the demands of heavy rigging with the responsibility of handling pieces of history. It’s the kind of challenge Meyer was built for: complex, specialized and anything but ordinary.