Glenmont - Edison National Historic Site

Last Sunday, Adrian & I visited Thomas Alva Edison's home and final resting place. Glenmont is located in a private (gated) community in West Orange, NJ. I had to talk to the Security that we, the ever avid local historians of Jersey, wanted to see Edison's home.

After clearing security, we drove up a steep hill and made a right towards the only red house. We got our tour tickets from the counter near Glenmont's green house and proceeded to the porch. Ben, our tour guide explained to us the history of the house, Edison's family and his work. He was probably happy to see us in an otherwise rather boring and frigidly cold afternoon. Nobody else was there except for the National Park staff & us. Anyway, he did a good job and the tour was very informative although it would be impossible to record down everything he told us.


The many angles of Glenmont - Edison's home for 45 years until his death in 1931.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Edison was that he invented the light bulb. In fact, he improved the light bulb based on earlier designs he bought from several inventors. His finished product - the incandescent light bulb or lamp was publicly demonstrated for the first time in his research lab at Menlo Park, NJ in 1879.

He created Edison General Electric Company, now General Electric (GE) Co.

He also dabbled with many other inventions like the telephone (unfortunately he did not continue on with this project; it was eventually improved & developed by A. Bell, A. Meucci & P. Reis), the phonograph, motion picture projector (yes! without Edison there would be no movies) and etc.

Edison's tin foil phonograph and projector exhibited in his home.


Edison's office on the second floor - the workaholic inventor continued to work here until late at night after leaving his Menlo Park Laboratory.


Edison's bedroom and where he died. We learned from Ben that Edison was Agnostic while Mrs. Edison was a strict Methodist.


Thomas Edison and his second wife, Mina's grave site - behind Glenmont. Unfortunately, the last living descendant of Thomas Edison (his son, Theodore) died in 1992.

P.S. Sorry for the blurry photos of Glenmont's interior rooms. Flash is prohibited to avoid damage to the timeless art pieces and other historical furniture. Should have brought the tripod :(