Wardenclyffe Tower, also called the Tesla Tower, was an early test site for sending messages without wires. Scientist Nikola Tesla built it on Long Island, New York, in the village of Shoreham between 1901 and 1902. Tesla wanted to send messages, telephone calls, and pictures across the Atlantic Ocean to England and ships at sea. He believed the Earth could carry these signals. To improve his system and compete with another inventor, Guglielmo Marconi, Tesla wanted to expand the project. However, the main financial supporter, J. P. Morgan, refused to fund these changes. No other investors were found, and the project was stopped in 1906 and never worked.
To pay Tesla’s debts, the tower was torn down in 1917 and the land was taken over by a bank in 1922. For 50 years, the site was used to make photography supplies. Many buildings were added, and the land was reduced from 200 acres (81 hectares) to 16 acres (6.5 hectares). However, the original brick building, which was 94 by 94 feet (29 by 29 meters) and designed by Stanford White, still stands today.
In the 1980s and 2000s, dangerous waste from the photography business was cleaned up. The site was later sold and cleared for new buildings. A group of people who wanted to save the site bought it in 2013, planning to build a museum about Nikola Tesla. In 2018, the property was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Design and operational principles
Nikola Tesla’s plan for Wardenclyffe began with his experiments in the early 1890s. His main goal was to create a new way to send power through the air without wires.
Tesla did not use the newly discovered radio waves, which were found in 1888 by German scientist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz. Tesla doubted these waves existed and believed, based on scientific ideas of the time, that if they did, they would travel in straight lines like visible light, making them useless for sending power over long distances.
Through laboratory work and large experiments in Colorado Springs in 1899, Tesla developed his own ideas for a global wireless system. He thought that if electric current was sent into the Earth at the right frequency, it could use the planet’s natural electrical charge to create "standing waves." These waves could be used to power devices or send signals anywhere on Earth. His system relied on older ideas about electricity and telegraphy, not the newer theories of electromagnetic waves.
Tesla’s plan used a charged layer in the atmosphere, an idea first proposed in 1872 by Mahlon Loomis. Tesla believed this layer could act as a return path for electricity and that the power flowing through it would light up the sky, providing nighttime illumination for cities and ships.
In February 1901, Tesla wrote an article titled "Talking With Planets" for Collier's Weekly. He described his system as using the Earth itself to send electricity, creating ripples that could be detected far away. He claimed this method could send both signals and power across great distances.
Although Tesla demonstrated wireless power transmission in Colorado Springs by lighting electric lights, he did not test his theories scientifically. He believed he had achieved Earth resonance, which he thought would work at any distance.
In January 1900, Tesla returned to New York and asked his friend Robert Underwood Johnson to publish an article about his work in The Century Magazine. Johnson had sent a photographer to Colorado Springs the previous year to document Tesla’s experiments. The article, titled "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy," focused on Tesla’s ideas about using solar energy, controlling weather, and ending war through future inventions. It also included famous photographs of Tesla’s experiments by Dickenson Alley.
Tesla tried to find investors for his wireless system, meeting with wealthy people in New York. He first asked his old friend George Westinghouse for help. Westinghouse agreed to lend Tesla $6,000 (equivalent to $232,200 in 2025) but did not invest in the project. Tesla then approached other wealthy individuals, including John Jacob Astor, who bought 500 shares in Tesla’s company. Tesla later caught the attention of financier J. P. Morgan.
Morgan was impressed by Guglielmo Marconi’s success in sending radio messages from a yacht race in 1900 but doubted the practicality of Tesla’s system. Tesla claimed his system was better than Marconi’s and based on patents that would surpass others. Morgan agreed to fund Tesla’s project in March 1901, giving him $150,000 (equivalent to $5.81 million in 2025) to build a wireless station on Long Island. Morgan would own 51% of the company and future patents from the project.
Tesla immediately began working on the station, ordering equipment from Westinghouse Electric. However, after reading an article by Marconi in June 1901, Tesla changed his plans. He believed Marconi was using Tesla’s ideas about Earth resonance and decided to build a more powerful transmitter to outperform competitors.
In July 1901, Tesla told Morgan about the changes and asked for more money. Morgan refused to fund the project further and demanded a report on expenses. Tesla later claimed that Morgan’s involvement in the 1901 stock market panic made supplies more expensive.
Despite Morgan’s refusal, Tesla continued the project. He considered building towers of varying heights to send low-frequency waves that could resonate with the Earth. His friend, architect Stanford White, helped him explore these ideas.
Plant at Wardenclyffe
Tesla bought 200 acres (81 hectares) of land near a railway line 65 miles (105 kilometers) from New York City in Shoreham on Long Island Sound. The land was purchased from James S. Warden, a developer building a resort called Wardenclyffe-On-Sound. Tesla later said his plan was to turn Wardenclyffe into a central city in his vision for a global system of 30 wireless plants that would send messages, media, and broadcast electrical power. The land around the Wardenclyffe plant was meant to become a "radio city" with factories making Tesla’s patented devices. Warden planned to build housing for the 2,000–2,500 Tesla employees expected to work there. In July 1901, Tesla signed a contract to build a wireless telegraph plant and electrical laboratory at Wardenclyffe.
Tesla’s final design for Wardenclyffe included a wooden tower 186 feet (57 meters) tall with a cupola (a dome) 68 feet (21 meters) in diameter. At the top of the tower was a 55-ton steel structure (some say it was made of copper) shaped like a half-sphere. The structure was designed so each part could be removed and replaced if needed. The main building on the site, designed by architect Stanford White, included a laboratory, boiler room, generator room, machine shop, and other spaces. Inside, there were electrical generators, transformers, Tesla coils, X-ray devices, a remote-controlled boat, and other equipment. The building was built in the style of the Italian Renaissance. The tower was designed by W.D. Crow, a colleague of White.
Under the tower, Tesla and his workers built structures to connect to the ground, but details were kept secret. Tesla later described a 120-foot (37-meter) shaft drilled into the ground with a stairway inside. At the bottom, he said, machines pushed iron pipes 300 feet into the earth to create a connection to the ground. Tesla claimed this would allow the Earth to "quiver" with electrical energy. Other descriptions mention four 100-foot-long tunnels, possibly lined with brick and waterproofed, extending in all directions from the shaft. The purpose of these tunnels is unclear, but theories suggest they might have been for drainage, access, or to improve ground connection.
John Joseph O’Neill, a Tesla biographer, noted that the tower’s cupola had a 5-foot hole for ultraviolet lights, possibly to create an ionized path through the atmosphere for electricity. Tesla’s plans for using ground conduction and atmospheric methods in Wardenclyffe remain unknown. The facility’s power would come from a 200-kilowatt coal-fired generator made by Westinghouse.
Construction began in September 1901, but Tesla struggled with funding. J.P. Morgan had not paid the full $150,000 promised, and Tesla wrote to Morgan and others asking for more money. In December 1901, Marconi announced he had successfully sent a wireless signal across the Atlantic, hurting Tesla’s credibility. Construction continued in 1902, and by June, Tesla moved his lab from New York to Wardenclyffe. By the end of 1902, the tower reached 187 feet. Tesla kept details of the project secret, telling reporters that similar wireless plants existed elsewhere.
Tesla continued to ask Morgan for funding, writing in 1903, “Will you help me or let my great work—almost complete—go to pots?” Morgan refused, saying he would not invest further. Around this time, the tower was seen flashing bright lights in the night, but no explanation was given. Tesla’s financial situation worsened as investors turned to Marconi’s cheaper system. Some funds came from Thomas Fortune Ryan, but they were used to pay debts, not construction. In 1905, Tesla’s patents expired, cutting off royalty income. He tried to raise money by advertising the Wardenclyffe facility but had little success.
In 1906, Tesla faced financial and personal challenges, including the death of long-time investor William Rankine and the murder of architect Stanford White. By 1904, Tesla took out a mortgage on the Wardenclyffe property with George C. Boldt, owner of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, to cover living expenses. In 1908, Tesla took out a second mortgage with Boldt. The facility was partially abandoned, and by the early 1900s, the project was no longer active.
Post-Tesla era
In 1925, the property was given to Walter L. Johnson of Brooklyn. On March 6, 1939, Plantacres, Inc. bought the land and later rented it to Peerless Photo Products, Inc.
AGFA Corporation purchased the property from Peerless and used the site from 1969 to 1992 before closing the facility. After the facility closed, the site was cleaned up to remove waste from the Photo Products era. The cleanup was supervised by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and paid for by AGFA.
In 2009, AGFA listed the property for sale at $1,650,000. The main building still stands today. AGFA stated that the land could be delivered fully cleared and level. AGFA spent $5 million by September 2008 to clean up silver and cadmium. A nonprofit preservation group supported by The Oatmeal bought the land in 2013 with the goal of creating a museum about Tesla.
On February 14, 1967, the Brookhaven Town Historical Trust, a nonprofit public benefit corporation, was formed. It chose the Wardenclyffe facility as a historic site and the first site to be preserved by the Trust on March 3, 1967. The Trust was dissolved by resolution on February 1, 1972, because it was never set up properly. On July 7, 1976, a plaque from Yugoslavia was placed near the building’s entrance by representatives from Brookhaven National Laboratory. The plaque read:
IN THIS BUILDING DESIGNED BY STANFORD WHITE, ARCHITECT NIKOLA TESLA BORN SMILJAN, YUGOSLAVIA 1856—DIED NEW YORK, U.S.A. 1943 CONSTRUCTED IN 1901–1905 WARDENCLYFFE HUGE RADIO STATION WITH ANTENNA TOWER 187 FEET HIGH /DESTROYED 1917/, WHICH WAS TO HAVE SERVED AS HIS FIRST WORLD COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM. IN MEMORY OF 120TH ANNIVERSARY OF TESLA'S BIRTH AND 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE U.S.A INDEPENDENCE
The sign was stolen in November 2009. An anonymous person is offering a $2,000 reward for its return.
In 1976, an application was made to add the main building to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The request was not approved. In 1994, the Tesla Wardenclyffe Project, Inc. was created to seek historic designation for the Wardenclyffe laboratory-office building and Tesla tower foundation on both the New York State and NRHP. The group’s goal is to preserve and reuse the Wardenclyffe site, a century-old laboratory of Nikola Tesla in Shoreham, Long Island, New York.
In October 1994, a second application for historic designation was filed. Inspections by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation found the site met state criteria for historic designation. A second visit was made on February 25, 2009. The site cannot be registered until a willing owner nominates it.
Designation as a National Landmark is waiting for the current owner to complete decommissioning activities.
In August 2012, concerns arose about a possible offer to develop the site for commercial use. The web cartoon The Oatmeal started a fundraiser to buy the property for $1.7 million, aiming to build a museum. Jane Alcorn, president of the nonprofit Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, and Matthew Inman, creator of The Oatmeal, worked together to preserve the site as a science center and museum. They launched the "Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum" campaign on Indiegogo, raising $850,000 in one week. The campaign received donations from Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, Inc., and others.
The money raised allowed the group to get a matching grant from New York State, helping them meet the seller’s asking price of $1.6 million. Total donations reached $2.2 million, with extra funds used for cleaning and restoring the property. A documentary titled Tower to the People – Tesla's Dream at Wardenclyffe Continues covered the effort.
On May 2, 2013, the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe announced it had purchased the 15.69-acre site from AGFA Corporation. The center plans to raise about $10 million to build a science learning center and museum honoring Tesla.
On May 13, 2014, The Oatmeal published a comic asking Elon Musk to donate $8 million. The next day, Musk said he would help. On July 10, 2014, during a birthday celebration for Tesla, Musk announced a $1 million donation and plans to install a Tesla Motors supercharging station at the site.
The center plans programs such as science teacher associations, conferences, and science competitions. Permanent exhibits will include a Tesla exhibit, interactive displays, and a living museum. On September 23, 2013, the President of Serbia, Tomislav Nikolić, unveiled a Tesla monument at the site.
Emergency repairs to the chimney began in February 2020. A groundbreaking event took place in June 2023.
Facility grounds
Wardenclyffe is located near the Shoreham Post Office and Shoreham Fire House on Route 25A in Shoreham, Long Island, New York. The site was split into two parts: a tower in the back and a main building. These two structures now make up the entire area. The property originally covered about 200 acres (0.81 km²). Today, it includes slightly less than 16 acres (65,000 m²).
2023 fire
On November 21, 2023, several months after the start of construction, the laboratory building had a fire. More than 100 firefighters from Long Island worked to stop the fire from spreading. Most of the original building made of brick remained intact.