For its first 100 years, the Winchester Repeating Arms factory was known for producing an assortment of deadly firearms. Gov. Dannel Malloy, Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and other city and University officials were on hand Tuesday as Higher One started a new chapter in the factory’s life — as the headquarters for New Haven-based financial services company Higher One.

Founded in 2000 by Mark Volchek ’00 GRD ’00 and Miles Laster ’02 while they were undergraduates, Higher One has grown in the past decade to include 240 employees providing financial services to students at 770 colleges across the country. The company spent about $45 million to turn the factory into a new headquarters, the New Haven Independent reported.

At its height, the factory employed 18,000 people before it closed in the 1960s. Higher One hopes to have 368 employees working at the new headquarters by 2018, according to the Independent.