11 Most Endangered Historic Places
Thomas Edison's Invention Factory
Year Listed: 1993
Location: West Orange, New Jersey
Current Status: Saved
Threat: Deterioration, Neglect, Poor Public Policy
Photo: Chuck Choi and Beyer Blinder Belle
Significance
In 1887, Thomas Edison built his innovative laboratory – the prototype of the modern industrial lab – and, until his death in 1931, created and perfected over half of his 1,093 patented inventions there.
Owned by the National Park Service, the site includes more than a dozen structures and over five million documents, including Edison's business and personal papers, and some 390,000 objects representing work done throughout his life.
When the site was added to the list of America's Most Endangered Historic Places, basic cataloguing and protection of these artifacts, as well as structural maintenance of the buildings, were needed to prevent deterioration of the great inventor's works.
Updates
After a six-year, $13 million overhaul, the workplace of the "Man of the Millennium" became a much richer experience for visitors. With funding from the Edison Innovation Foundation, General Electric, and the Charles Edison Fund of Newark, some of the 400,000 artifacts, phonographs, and five million documents were brought out of storage. Curators used Edison's photographs as a guide to recreate the rooms just as they once were, and many of them now house historical kiosks with flickering images showing Edison at work. The Invention Factory includes 48,000 sound recordings, Edison's own library of 10,000 books, and archives with 60,000 photographic images – all protected in climate-controlled buildings.
The various shops in the sprawling lab complex have been painstakingly cleaned and upgraded. Building 4, the former Metallurgical Laboratory, is now open to researchers as an archive. There is a new museum store and auditorium, and – for the first time – visitors can go on self-guided tours, which include a tour of Edison's home in nearby Llewellyn Park. Also new to the historical park is a research wing called "Building 11," which had been moved from the Edison labs in 1940 to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. It is now back home, reassembled board by board, and houses quarter-inch-thick discs filled with Edison's recordings.
The Thomas Edison Invention Factory rehabilitation project received a $250,000 federal Save America's Treasures challenge grant in 2001 for the conservation of the Edison collections. General Electric Company – the corporate descendant of Thomas A. Edison – donated another $5 million through Save America's Treasures to help preserve and restore the Invention Factory. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the gift during her 1998 Save America's Treasures tour of the Northeast.
General Electric chairman and CEO John F. Welch, who joined Mrs. Clinton for the announcement, said that "Thomas Edison was not only the inventor of the light bulb and the father of GE, his inventions were also critical in developing industries ranging from power generation to sound recording to the movies. It is impossible to imagine the 20th century without him. GE is proud to help restore and preserve the laboratories where he earned more than half of his 1,093 patents. We hope Edison's legacy will inspire future generations as much as he's inspired us at GE."
