Contractor error suspected in Tesla Science Center fire

Nearly a year after last fall’s devastating fire at the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe in Shoreham, the cause of the blaze remains undetermined — though the center’s executive director said this week that it was most likely sparked by contractors using blowtorches.

“They were cutting metal with torches that create sparks, and where they were working that day was right above the roof where the fire started,” TSCW executive director Marc Alessi said in an interview. “The only thing [arson investigators] couldn’t rule out was contractor error.” 

Mr. Alessi said the contractor’s insurance company recently completed a six-month investigation into the fire and denied the claim — prompting the science center to appeal the decision. The contractor identified in the fire marshal’s report did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Alessi made the comments during an interview about a fundraiser this Friday, Sept. 13, at the Cinema Arts Centre community theater in Huntington, to raise both money and awareness of the plight of the embattled lab complex. The event will feature a screening of the director’s cut of the film “Invisible Threads — From Wireless to War,” followed by a Q & A with the filmmaker.

“There’s a lot of people on Long Island, despite all the reporting that’s been done, that aren’t aware of this project, and some of them are science enthusiasts and likely donors,” Mr. Alessi said. “So events like Friday night are really important to get out into the public consciousness, get people to learn more about [groundbreaking inventor Nikola] Tesla.”

The site was added to the U.S. National Historic Register in 2018. 

In the spring of 2023, the nonprofit foundation that runs the science center began an ambitious $20 million project to preserve Tesla’s last remaining laboratory and redevelop the 16-acre property into a world-class science center. The foundation had raised $14 million toward the $20 million goal — including $1 million from Elon Musk, who named his company after the inventor — when the project got underway.

Then, in November, a fire tore through the roof of the 10,000-square-foot lab and destroyed steel girders that date back to the turn of the 20th century.

“We’re looking to rehab whatever steel girders from Tesla’s time that we can,” Mr. Alessi said. “There’s probably not many that we could save, so we’re going to have to fabricate to that time period the steel girders, which is going to be an expensive proposition, and then just redo the roof.”

He said the foundation must raise a total of $10 million, which includes the $6 million yet to be raised for the overall project, $3 million in fire damages and another million needed to meet the increased costs of completing the redevelopment plan. In order to keep the project moving forward, according to Mr. Alessi, the foundation needs to raise at least $2.5 million in the next year.

The project is an effort to spotlight and celebrate one of the most remarkable innovators of the modern era.

Born in 1856 in what is now Croatia, Tesla moved to the U.S. at the age of 28 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He went to work for Thomas Edison, though he soon struck out on his own.

At the Shoreham site of the Tesla Science Center, he built a massive laboratory and a 187-foot wireless communication tower and power transmitter, both designed by famed architect Stanford White. The effort was called the Wardenclyffe Tower project, but it ran out of money before its completion.

A brilliant engineer but a hapless businessman, Tesla invented prototypes for a bounty of technologies that drive most modern communication, including wi-fi, radio, remote control and an induction motor powered by AC (alternating current), which outperformed his rival and former boss Edison’s DC (direct current) system.

“He never married or had a family — he just wanted to invent,” Mr. Alessi said. “He didn’t want to own things. He didn’t want to be Elon Musk, a CEO of a company. His mentality was ‘if I make billions for industrialists, they’ll always invest in my lab and I’ll live a good life and just invent things.’ He knew he had a unique mind for invention.”

In 1904, the prescient creator predicted the cellphone, describing a “cheap and simple receiving device, which might be carried in one’s pocket” to a Boston Sunday Globe reporter.

“One day, a businessman in New York will pull a device out of his pocket and call anywhere in the world, wirelessly,” Tesla told the newspaper, according to Mr. Alessi.

“In his time, that’s why people thought he was crazy, because he would say things like that,” the executive director said. “People couldn’t fathom it, but he knew where it would go.”

“He was part of our local community and he basically changed the world,” said Mr. Alessi, who lives three houses away from Tesla’s former home in Shoreham. “He was almost forgotten. This is his last standing lab — or the last authentic piece of history that touched him — and I think we all owe it to the man that has changed our lives to preserve his legacy.”