Edison Home brings inventor's Louisville link to light
Louisville has been the home of many bright lights of U.S. history, but none brighter than Thomas Alva Edison, inventor of the first commercially practical incandescent bulb, the phonograph and other world-changing devices.
Before he was the Wizard of Menlo Park, N.J., Edison was the telegraph operator of Washington Street in Louisville, where he moved to in 1866 and took up residence in the Butchertown neighborhood.
That small house, built around 1850, is now a museum dedicated to the famed inventor and featuring a fascinating assortment of his creations, including early light bulbs, phonographs that still play a century after they were produced, an Edison Kinetoscope, the first home motion picture projector, and more.
Edison moved to Louisville at age 19, and even at that age, he already had his mind on inventions. He lost his job and left the city after spilling sulfuric acid onto the floor of the telegraph office while working with a lead-acid battery.
Other cities have Edison museums, but "none that concentrate on that period of his life," said Kristen Lutes, executive director of the Thomas Edison House. "We feel that it was a really big deal that he even lived here."
While many of Louisville's historic structures from Edison's time are gone, the house on Washington Street somehow survived — even weathering the great flood of 1937. The shotgun structure remained in use as a residence until the 1970s, but local residents kept alive the memory of its historic significance.
Butchertown is a tightly knit community," and the Edison house "was always very important to the neighborhood," Lutes said. A Butchertown neighborhood association purchased the building in 1973 after it had been condemned, and with help from the city, General Electric Co., the Bingham Foundation and other donors, it was restored and reborn as a museum.
Today the home attracts people from all over the nation, such as Saeed Haghdoost and Fatemeh Namdar of New Mexico, who dropped by the home while on a visit to Louisville.
"It's important history," Namdar said, with ties to things "that we use every day," such as the light bulb.
The home is now operated by the Historic Homes Foundation, which also operates Farmington Historic Plantation and Whitehall on Lexington Road. The Thomas Edison House is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and youths 18 and under and $3 for ages 5 and under. Group rates are available.
A short video of the home was produced by Kentucky Educational Television and can be viewed at here.
- by Bill Wolfe, Louisville Reporter for HelloMetro
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Bill WolfeBill Wolfe is an experienced journalist with a broad background in writing, editing and photography. He has worked as staff writer at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., and the Atlanta Journal & Constitution in Atlanta, Ga., covering beats ranging from consumer news to religion and business.
