Chapter 1:
Revenant
People ask me if there is a ghost. If the Wizard has discovered a frequency or some hidden tunnel to make his way back to us. And I smile. No, there is no ghost in Tesla's cottage. Instead, the house in which he lived while he experimented with his great transmission tower, the house itself has become a ghost. Although the building still stands, its past has been forgotten. For here, Tesla led a private life quite apart from what is widely known about him. Here he spent some of the happiest moments of his life. And here, too, he suffered his hardest blows. The personal drama of this most important and pivotal time of his life, is obscure, eclipsed by his astounding career. As if there was no private person, no Nikola, no Niko. Only the inventor, Tesla. In some ways the very heart and soul of the man has been deleted. I feel this acutely because I live here. Tesla's cottage is also my home.
Today, the cottage is just another house in Shoreham Village, a tiny community on the North Shore of Long Island. Neighbors have a vague knowledge of its history, but that's hardly more than a bit of trivia. When they pass by, it's me they greet. They stop and we talk about gardening, or we take a few minutes to let our dogs play, and then we go on with our lives, ignoring the cottage's history - except for the brass lettering on the plaque beside the front door which, for a few moments a day, catches the sun and flashes its message: Nikola Tesla lived here.
When you say the name Nikola Tesla, people think of a scientist and inventor, a visionary genius. They don't know the person, not as I do. How can they? They don't walk every day in his footsteps, breathe the same sea air, gaze across the bluff to the same rock-strewn beach and the soul-piercing sweep of Earth's horizon. I warm myself by the same fireplace, enter the house through the same doorway, sit on the porch watching the gulls as he must have done. I walk through the village on a parallel plane to his era, re-creating in my mind the rustic bridge that once led to the cottage, the inn where Nikola dined, the general store that for a time was also the post office - the sights Tesla saw as he walked to his lab. For me, Nikola is everywhere.
He first arrived at Wardenclyffe in 1901 at the age of forty-five. By then, he had already proven the existence of radio waves, invented a range of electrical devices. While still in his thirties, he registered a series of history-making patents. In 1891 he gave a lecture at Columbia University so stunningly innovative it was likened to the invention of the wheel. It catapulted him into the ranks of the leading scientists of the age. It was "Tesla" lightbulbs that set the Columbian World's Fair ablaze so that it became known as "the White City." Only two years later, in 1895, his polyphase generators started spinning at Niagara Falls, pumping electricity for a distance of twenty-three miles to illuminate lamps and run machines throughout Buffalo, when all Edison could manage was to transmit electricity no more than a mile or so.
Tesla's alternating current literally changed the world. He had made advances in electrotherapy and X-ray technology, and he patented key devices that made wireless transmission of messages possible. He foresaw, in effect, the Information Age, and invented remote control. All this before the turn of the twentieth century. And yet, today, Tesla is largely forgotten.
Forgotten too, is the community that was here. Had his tower succeeded, Tesla would have made Wardenclyffe his permanent home. His laboratory is one and a half miles south of the cottage. The lab still exists, unoccupied and surrounded by a wrought iron fence. I used to see people peering through the bars, wondering if the building is open. Some read the information posted in front by the Tesla Science Center, the organization that now owns the site. Others take pictures. Some visitors are puzzled by other abandoned and half-torn-down buildings on the grounds. Some stand gazing at the statue of Tesla donated by the Serbian government. Lately, however, visitors stand gaping at the building or shaking their heads at the damage done by a recent fire that nearly destroyed the lab. They walk the full length of the property and back again. Then, one by one, they quietly drive away.
If you come by some day to visit the lab, you may, after walking about, decide to drive through the surrounding area. Maybe you arrive on a warm autumn day, the kind of day when the orange leaves set off a blazing blue sky. You leave 25A, the route along which the lab is located, and in your wanderings, you discover a little stone bridge. The passage is so narrow, only one car can get through at a time. Maybe, you think, you'll stumble across the Wardenclyffe train station, but then you remember the railroad no longer comes this far and the station no longer exists.
Once you pass under the bridge, you encounter houses of every era and style with stretches of woodland between. There is a peacefulness about these modest homes, as if, with the years, they have settled comfortably into the land. Would Tesla remember this road? Had he slept as a guest in one of these homes, or had he commuted each day from New York City to his lab?
A sign on your right reads: WELCOME TO SHOREHAM VILLAGE, and your hope flags. This isn't Wardenclyffe at all. Still, you continue along the slightly downhill route and arrive at what is today the village center, a crossroads formed by the community's two main "arteries," the north-south road you've just come down and a cross street that, according to your GPS, turns from its east-west orientation and runs south, leading back to the lab. It's a good place to park and have a look around.
Along the curb to your right is a ball field, and an open lawned area. There is also a row of tall hedges, and around the corner, a line of rosebushes whose abundant pink blooms tilt toward the curb. Birds are chirping, lots of them among the tall trees, and the rhythmic sound of a basketball taps . taps . taps . from the other side of the street. Up ahead, the road parts in a short boulevard where an ancient yew tree grows, and there the road ends. Beyond lies a parking lot and a building, a hall or a rec center, you guess; but your eye skips past all that to a glittering blue band of water, the Long Island Sound. The sky and the Sound, the playground and field, the whole place seems to spread out generousy under the late autumn sun. You take a moment to breathe the sea air. Had Tesla once ventured here to the shore? Or had he been too busy, sequestered at all times in his lab? The answer is Tesla did indeed spend much of his time here. You are standing in Wardenclyffe.
Our little-known community, now renamed Shoreham, has existed discreetly, some would say secretly, since the Tesla years. In the old days, it was a summer resort. "Sojourners" wrote postcards calling it "Paradise," and truly it was. A 1902 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle describes it this way:
About halfway down the length of Long Island on the north shore is a beautiful spot called Wardenclyffe. As seen from a passing train, a lone station, thick woods and a dusty road make up the place, but a five minutes' drive on this dusty road will bring one to the shore of the Sound. An unequaled view, a perfect beach and a continual breeze constitute some of the charms of Wardenclyffe as a quiet summer resort. The Inn this year, under new management, is a fairly large, handsomely and commodiously equipped summer hotel. Picturesque old fireplaces in the office and smoking room seem to indicate that the house is an old one, while the large, light dining rooms and parlors show the modern construction. For amusement the visitor has tennis, golf, sailing and the usual entertainment in a quiet way. A number of prominent people have erected cottages on the shore and the colony bids fair to be a popular one in the future. The cottages of S. W. Millard, the Allens and the Wardens are delightfully located on the bluffs.1
Little has changed. The inn is gone now, and the recreations are somewhat different, but the idea of "entertainment in a quiet way" still prevails. The village hall/clubhouse sits at the edge of the bluff where a clubhouse, in some form or other, has always been. The focus, of course, is the water and the rock-strewn white beach that runs uninterrupted for miles under a sky that is, more often than not, a deep and dizzying blue.
But as the village spreads open before you, it shuts you out with a parking lot gate. Your choice is to try taking the cross street (which will only lead you away from the village) or turn around and go out the way you came in. That is, unless you enter the little lane to your left.
Curious, you get back in your car and drive slowly up the lane, which is crowded by hedgerows. It is one of a maze of such streets that wind and intertwine through what is now known as "the old village." A green and white road sign reads Wardencliff Rd. Not the historical spelling, but still, a clue. And you wonder if some hidden history can yet be discovered. You know it exists. Just out of reach. A long-ago era resurfacing. A small space lost in time. You...
