The Nikola Tesla Legacy Corridor
Nikola Tesla died 79 years ago alone in his suite in the Hotel New Yorker. His body was cremated and the remains were sent to the land of his birth Serbia which had become Yugoslavia and is now Croatia.
The day after Tesla’s body was discovered, his nephew, Sava Korsanovic, a Yugoslavian ambassador and Kenneth Swezey, a journalist and friend of Tesla, entered his room in search of a will. In Tesla’s safe, they found some notes, keys, and certificates of his US citizenship and several of the13 honorary PhD degrees he had received from around the world, and the gold Edison medal that had been awarded to Tesla a quarter of a century earlier by the American Institute of Electric Engineers.
The next day, the US Justice Department ordered its Office of the Alien Properties Custodian to search Tesla’s room for any possible war-related documents since this was 1943, the height of WWII. This Office had the function of confiscating enemy property in wartime. A few years before, Tesla had announced that he had invented a devise that would put an end to all wars. He called it a “Particle Beam Weapon” and the press referred to it as a “Death Ray.” He had written to President Roosevelt about it and just a week before Tesla died, President Roosevelt made arrangements to meet with Tesla regarding this invention.
After Tesla’s room and some 60 storage trunks that he had stored around the city were examined, the Agency sent its report to the FBI. They had found no weapon designs. So, since nephew Sava found no will he ordered all of Tesla’s effects shipped to Yugoslavia. But when the safe was opened in Belgrade, the Edison gold medal was missing. Ken Swezey failed to recover the missing medal and therefore turned to J Edgar Hoover to have the FBI pay the $400 to recast the Edison medal. He wrote to the director:
By giving us a system which made electric power universally available, Nikola Tesla —
more than any other one man — helped put America on top of the world.
…his gold Edison medal was the only material evidence left of this country’s appreciation.
A remarkable statement, but the fact is, the appreciation was not from this country. It was from Tesla’s scientific colleagues. Has this country shown any appreciation to Nikola Tesla since his passing?
Since 1896, AC electricity first flowed from Niagara Falls to North Tonawanda and on to Buffalo through the genius of Nikola Tesla.
At Niagara Falls, the birthplace of the electric age, there was absolutely nothing for 80 years until the communist government of Yugoslavia donated a statue of Tesla. It was originally placed in front of a parking lot with no mention of who this man was and what he did for humanity.
In Buffalo, NY, the first Electric City on the planet, where Tesla’ spark that lit the entire world, first started its journey, there was amazingly no public mention of Tesla for one and a quarter centuries.
So, four fellow New Yorkers, private citizens decided to do what no one else had done: no nation, no state, no municipality, no scientific society. We started by creating a non-profit group, the Buffalo Niagara Nikola Tesla Council (Martin McGee, Paul Swisher, Stephen J Lestingi, and Francis S Lestingi, PhD) and embarked on an endeavor to develop a Triptych Tribute of Appreciation here in Western New York where it all first happened. We named our tribute the Nikola Tesla Legacy Corridor. We believe it is profound and powerful, elegant and educational, unique and unprecedented, acutely long-overdue, and above all, it is appreciative!
The Yugoslavian statue of Tesla on Goat Island recently was moved to a more prominent place but it still sat for 45 years without a word about Tesla other than his name and dates.
Information Panel describing who Tesla was and what he did to transform our civilization
So we designed and donated an attractive Information Panel describing who Tesla was and what he did to transform our civilization. It now accompanies the statue, so visitors from around the world can learn more about our fellow New Yorker.
And in Buffalo…
We designed and donated to the City of Buffalo an elegant 7-ft bronze statue along with a beautiful Information Panel and even got the City to name the area where the statue resides as Nikola Tesla Park, the only park in the entire United States named in his honor.
Nikola Tesla Park, the only park in the entire United States named in his honor.
And finally, just 3-miles from the original North Tonawanda Transformer House we designed and gifted a monumental, stylized art structure of a Tesla Coil to the City of North Tonawanda in Gratwick-Riverside Park.
Stylized art structure of a Tesla Coil in Gratwick-Riverside Park
Thus, our Triptych Tribute of Appreciation, the Nikola Tesla Legacy Corridor is complete for all the world to behold. We have honored our fellow New Yorker, our fellow American, the man who put New York on top of America, and America on top of the world, in the location where it all started right here in western New York.
7-ft bronze statue at Nikola Tesla Park in Downtown Buffalo
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