Historic Long Island - Nikola Tesla's Tower

We have heard all manner of stories about the Nikola Tesla tower which once stood overlooking Long Island Sound from an eminence near Shoreham. One faded photograph of the structure which we have seen bore a date line of the year 1890 and referred to the tower as a landmark of sailing ship days, implying that it had been erected originally as an aid to navigation. No mention was made of its creator, a native of the Austro-Hungarian province of Lika, now in Yugoslavia, where Tesla was born in 1856.

The fact is that Nikola Tesla, considered by many the greatest electrical wizard of his day and age, not excluding Thomas A. Edison or the Italian Marconi, built his tower shortly after 1900. Having already met with success in this country, both scientifically and financially, Tesla had the backing of J. P. Morgan.

One James S. Warden, manager and director of the Suffolk County Land Company, which had acquired 2,000 acres of unimproved land at Shoreham, contributed a 200-acre plot as the site of the tower, wireless powerhouse and broadcasting station which Tesla planned. Warden, it seems, had visions of an industry that would employ thousands of men and women, and hoped to house them on his remaining 1,800 acres. He called the development, for such it was, Wardenclyffe.

That the famous architect, Stanford White, not only designed the tower from Tesla’s rough drawings but gave his services to the cause without charge, is not generally known. Such, however, was the case.

White also sent one of his associates, W. D. Crow of East Orange, N. J., to supervise the construction work and adjust the designs and dimensions to meet unforeseen problems. The tower, together with the 100-foot square brick plant and laboratory, was completed in 1902.

During the process Tesla, who was living at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, commuted to and from Shoreham by the LIRR. A resident of nearby Middle Island once told us that he had frequently seen the tall, gaunt inventor step down from the late morning train at the Shoreham station, and again leave there for New York on the one mid-afternoon westbound train.

According to John J. O’Neill’s life of Tesla, titled “Prodigal Genius” and published in 1944 by Ives Washburn, Inc., a copy of which was loaned us by Millard Griffiths, Grumman engineer, the tower, a skeletonized structure, built almost entirely of wood, stood about 154 feet in height. Supporting a copper electrode 100 feet in diameter at its peak, its wind resistance was terrific and grave fears that it would not survive the first heavy blow were felt by all but Tesla and Crow.

It did, however, outlive its usefulness. Although Morgan sank $150,000 into the project, and Tesla and others contributed generously to the cost of construction and the heavy equipment, all built to order, the so-called “prodigal genius” was forced to close the laboratory in 1905. The tower, which was never completed to the point of operation, was practically abandoned. There it stood for more than a decade, a monument not only to Tesla’s tenacity but also to the practical designing of Stanford White and his associate W. O. Crow.

We are told that the tower continued to stand in spite of heavy gales until the beginning of the first World War when army engineers, considering it too glaring a landmark for enemy submarines that might enter the Sound, decreed that it must be dynamited. But following the blast, we are told, although the skeleton structure lay prone, it was almost completely intact and remained so for some time thereafter.