Nikola Tesla began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility ca. 1898, and in 1901, construction began on the land near Long Island Sound. Architect Stanford White designed the Wardenclyffe facility main building. The tower was designed by W.D. Crow, an associate of White. Funding for Tesla’s project was provided by influential industrialists and other venture capitalists. The project was initially backed by the wealthy J. P. Morgan (he had a substantial investment in the facility, initially investing $150,000).
In June 1902, Tesla moved his laboratory operations from his Houston Street laboratory to Wardenclyffe. However, in 1903, when the tower structure was near completion, it was still not yet functional due to last-minute design changes that introduced in an unintentional defect. When Morgan wanted to know “Where can I put the meter?“, Tesla had no answer. Tesla’s vision of free power did not agree with Morgan’s worldview. Construction costs eventually exceeded the money provided by Morgan, and additional financiers were reluctant to come forth. By July 1904, Morgan (and the other investors) finally decided they would not provide any additional financing. Morgan also encouraged other investors to avoid the project. In May 1905, Tesla’s patents on alternating current motors and other methods of power transmission expired, halting royalty payments and causing a severe reduction of funding to the Wardenclyffe Tower. In an attempt to find alternative funding, Tesla advertised the services of the Wardenclyffe facility, but he met with little success. By this time, Tesla had also designed the Tesla turbine at Wardenclyffe and produced Tesla coils for sale to various businesses.
By 1905, since Tesla could not find any more backers, most of the site’s activity had to be shut down. The main hall continued to be used for blackface minstrel shows until October of that year. Employees were laid off in 1906, but parts of the building remained in use until 1907. In 1908, the property was foreclosed for the first time. Tesla procured a new mortgage from the proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, George C. Boldt. The facility was partially abandoned around 1911, the tower structure eventually becoming deteriorated. Between 1912 and 1915, Tesla’s finances unraveled, and when the funders wanted to know how they were going to recapture their investments, Tesla was unable to give satisfactory answers. Newspaper headlines of the time labeled it “Tesla’s million-dollar folly.” The facility’s main building was breached and vandalized around this time. Collapse of the Wardenclyffe project may have contributed to the mental breakdown Tesla experienced during this period. Coupled to the personal tragedy of Wardenclyffe was the earlier 1895 unexplained fire in Tesla’s Houston Street laboratory. In this fire, he lost much of his equipment, notes and documents. This produced a state of severe depression for Tesla.
In 1915, legal ownership of the Wardenclyffe property was transferred to George Boldt for a $20,000 debt. Demolition (reportedly by the U.S. Govt [1] and salvaging of the tower occurred in 1917. However, the main building remains standing to this day. Tesla was not in New York during the tower’s destruction. George Boldt wished to make the property available for sale. New York papers reported that the tower had been destroyed by order of the government to prevent its use by foreign agents. In 1917, the United States government may have aided the destruction of the Wardenclyffe Tower, ostensibly because it was believed it could provide a navigational landmark for German submarines. Neither claim is known to have been substantiated. On April 20, 1922 Tesla lost an appeal of judgment versus his backers in the second foreclosure. This effectively locked Tesla out of any future development of the facility.
In 1925, the property ownership was transferred to Walter L. Johnson of Brooklyn. On March 6, 1939, Plantacres, Inc. purchased the facility’s land and subsequently leased it to Peerless Photo Products, Inc. (which was subsequently bought out by AGFA Corporation, the current owner.). On February 14, 1967, the nonprofit public benefit corporation Brookhaven Town Historical Trust was established. It selected the Wardenclyffe facility to be designated as a historic site and as the first site to be preserved by the Trust on March 3, 1967. In the month of July in 1976, a plaque from Tesla’s birth country, Yugoslavia, was installed by the Brookhaven Town Historic trust near the entrance of the facility. It reads:
IN THIS BUILDING DESIGNED BY STANFORD WHITE, ARCHITECT
NIKOLA TESLA
BORN SMILJAN, YUGOSLAVIA 1856, DIED NEW YORK, U.S.A. 1943
CONSTRUCTED IN 1901-1905 WARDENCLYFFE, HUGE RADIO STATION WITH
ANTENNA TOWER 187 FT. HIGH (DESTROYED 1917), WHICH WAS TO SERVE
AS HIS FIRST WORLD COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM.
IN MEMORY OF 120TH ANNIVERSARY OF TESLA’S BIRTH AND 200TH
ANNIVERSARY OF U.S.A. INDEPENDENCE – July 10, 1976
Also, in 1976, an application was filed to nominate the main building for listing listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It failed to get approval. In 1994, the campaign for placement of the Wardenclyffe facility on the National Register of Historic Places of New York was renewed. In October 1994 a second Application for formal nomination was filed. The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation conducted inspections and determined the facility meets New York State criteria for historic designation.
The present owner of the existing Wardenclyffe facility is AGFA-Gevaert. The site is undergoing a final cleanup of waste produced during its Photo Products era. The clean up is being conducted under the scrutiny of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and is being paid for by AGFA. The tower base is one of the areas where the clean up is under way.
Nikola Tesla 