While everyone was at the shower, I got to go exploring. So I went to Menlo Park, where Thomas Alva Edison had his first office and research center. He did some of his most important work here, received 400 patents, and invented the incandescent light bulb, and the phonograph on this site. This is the Edison Memorial Tower, built to commemorate the work that took place here. It is a beautiful structure, 138 feet tall, built in 1938 from concrete, and it needs work. After 72 years, the structure is showing some damage - some of the skin is coming off and crashing to the ground. It is surrounded by a chain link fence, and is slated for restoration - money has been appropriated, fortunately. So the cool thing is that I met a fellow from Cincinnati, Ohio who had come to see this and was surprised that there wasn't more here to see - the little museum is closed for restoration. I told him about the Edison Historic Site up in West Orange, NJ, a National Park site, with factory buildings and laboratories and Edison't house, and he told me that some of the buildings that had been here were rescued by Henry Ford, and have been restored are on display at Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford Museum in Ann Arbor. I love the part about how I come to photograph a structure, and then end up having such a nice conversation with a stranger. Please click on each of these to see the images in more detail.
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