The National Park Service opened the renovated Edison Laboratory Complex at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange, NJ in the fall of 2009. The renovation was a complex project to preserve the historic buildings and the artifact and archival collections at the Laboratory Complex and Glenmont Estate. The original historic furnishings and documents were beginning to deteriorate and were at risk of loss or damage from fire because of old, outdated alarm and sprinkler systems. The vast majority of the artifact collection was inaccessible to visitors and researchers while stored on the upper floors of the historic main laboratory.
The original furnishings have been moved back into many rooms and the unique museum collections are now available to see, hear, and experience. Installation of a new elevator and stair tower adjacent to the main laboratory building allows new public access to the upper floors of the laboratory that now feature new exhibits. The Edison home at the Glenmont Estate has also been renovated. The new Thomas Edison experience offers visitors self-guided audio tours, cell phone tours, films, grounds walks, school workshops and traditional guided programs.
Glenmont is located in Llewellyn Park, West Orange, the first romantically designed, planned residential community in the United States. A Queen Anne style mansion with 29 rooms, Glenmont was designed by the architect Henry Hudson Holly. Edison purchased the Glenmont estate with 13.5 acres including house, barn, greenhouse, and furnishings in January of 1886 for $125,000, half its estimated value.
Due to the limited number of people who have signed-up for the trip thus far we cannot afford to have lunch at Highlawn Pavilion. We can make the trip break -even at the current price and number of sign-ups by substituting a box lunch with wine at the same price. If we get more sign-ups there will be a profit which we plan to distribute back to the participants.
This will be an interesting trip and we encourage you to invite family and friends.Break-even cost is $74 per person with some refund if more people sign-up.
We plan on boarding at 7:45AM and departing by 8AM from the DCA parking lot.
We expect to arrive back before 5PM
At the end of the last century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation’s burgeoning industrial prosperity. In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort patronized by the tycoons of that same industrial prosperity, among them Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon. Despite repeated warnings of possible danger, nothing was done about the dam. Then came May 31, 1889, when the dam burst, sending a wall of water thundering down the mountain, smashing through Johnstown, and killing more than 2,000 people. It was a tragedy that became a national scandal.
