Edison Memorial Tower

A glass lamp more than nine feet across crowns a concrete tower on the ground where Thomas Edison ran his Menlo Park laboratory. The marker at the site says the laboratory was occupied from 1876 to 1886, and that in 1929 Henry Ford moved it to Dearborn, Michigan. A temporary tower and light were switched on by Edison from Dearborn on 21 October 1929; the marker says lightning destroyed that tower on 11 August 1937, while the permanent one was being built around it.

The Thomas Edison Center at Menlo Park gives 1938 for the Edison Memorial Tower, while the marker says 1937, and Preservation NJ describes a 131-foot cast-concrete Art Deco structure. According to a description recorded by the Historical Marker Database, the lamp at the top was cast by Corning Glass Works from 153 pieces of amber-tinted Pyrex glass set on a steel frame. It is 9 feet 2 inches across at its widest and, without the frame, weighs more than three tons. That description lists twelve lamps inside, in three wattages.