Tesla Science Center officials get $500G grant toward museum

The nonprofit that runs a Shoreham site honoring Nikola Tesla hopes to turn the famed inventor's former laboratory into a museum in about two years after receiving a $500,000 federal grant.

Tesla Science Center officials said the grant, from the National Park Service's Save America’s Treasures program, is a major boost for efforts to create a global science center at the site of the early 20th-century visionary's only remaining lab building.

The grant will help pay for removing mold from the interior of the 10,000-square-foot brick structure, built by Tesla in 1901 along with a 187-foot wooden communications tower that later was torn down.

Executive director Marc Alessi said the museum could draw 180,000 visitors annually, including 60,000 from outside the metropolitan area.

"Part of that building would be walking back into history," Alessi told Newsday. "There's a big national and international interest."

But Tesla officials said they still have a ways to go before they can open the museum. The grant brings them just over halfway to their $20 million fundraising goal.

"It makes a dent," Jane Alcorn, the nonprofit's founder and former president, told Newsday. "We have to take a lot of steps before we complete the project, and it costs a lot of money. This is a really big and important one."

The Serbian-American engineer, who died in 1943, is credited with inventing the alternating current motor and a transformer called the Tesla coil. But he struggled financially most of his life as rivals such as Thomas Edison became rich and famous.

The Shoreham site was bought in 2013 by the nonprofit, which has hosted outdoor events such as an annual Tesla birthday celebration in July.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who Alessi said helped secure the park service grant, called Tesla's lab, known as Wardenclyffe, "one of Long Island’s historical treasures."

Tesla's story is timeless because he envisioned ideas such as wireless communication that now are commonplace, Alessi said.

"In addition to celebrating the history of Tesla, we intend to celebrate his ethos — his vision for the advancement of humanity," he said. 

But assembling exhibits is complicated because the site contains little evidence of his work, Alessi said. Looters stole equipment left behind when Tesla was forced to abandon the site in 1906, and many Tesla-related items were shipped to Serbia and are owned by a Belgrade museum, Alessi said. 

"When he lost control of the property, he was in debt," Alessi said. "Some of the things were taken from him by debtors. ... It's a challenge. When we hear of things that fit that criteria of telling his story, we try to obtain it."

A photograph chemical plant used the 16-acre site after Tesla left, Alcorn said, adding the federal grant will help "stabilize" Tesla's lab building. The roof needs to be fixed and other buildings on the site also require repairs, she said.

"It's really important for us to ... protect the buildings from further damage," she said. "And this [grant] will help."

By Carl MacGowan

carl.macgowan@newsday.comCarlMacGowan

Carl MacGowan is a Long Island native who covers Brookhaven Town after having previously covered Smithtown, Suffolk County courts and numerous spot news and feature stories over his 20-plus year career at Newsday.