By KATHY CHANG
Staff Writer
EDISON — People who visit the Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum will get a better understanding of Sarah Jordan’s role in the history of the renowned inventor as a result of an Eagle Scout project.
Steven Zederbaum, a member of Troop 17 of Metuchen and Edison and a sophomore at John P. Stevens High School, who said he was inspired by local historian Walter Stochel Jr., memorialized the Sarah Jordan boarding home with a paver-brick outline of the original foundation and an informational kiosk that he built.
The high school sophomore also supervised and helped with the clearing and landscaping of the area, which is on a corner of Christie Street across from the tower.
“I hope to get even more local residents thinking about all of the history that occurred in Edison, just blocks from our homes,” he said.
The Menlo Park complex was an all-male environment. The closest workaday involvement of women was at the Sarah Jordan boarding house, according to the Henry Ford Museum.
Offering room and board for unmarried employees at the complex, it was operated by Sarah Jordan, a distant relative of Edison.
The house also played host to the experimental lighting system installed throughout Menlo Park in December of 1879.
Jordan’s boarding house not only gave Thomas Edison’s workers a place to sleep, but it also was a community center for their dining and after-work social activity.
As one of three metal plaques on the newly constructed kiosk explains, the boarders’ proximity to the lab allowed them “to easily travel to work, especially when their services were required well into the night as Edison was fond of doing.”
Constructed in 1870, Jordan was persuaded to open it as a boarding house.
The house was dismantled in 1928 and moved in 1929 to Deerfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, where Henry Ford recreated much of the Wizard of Menlo Park’s original research complex.
“Commemoration of the boarding house was truly a community effort,” said Zederbaum.
Agencies that supported and approved the Eagle Scout project included the Edison Memorial Tower Corporation, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the New Jersey Historic Preservation Office.
Officials who worked with Zederbaum included Kathleen Carlucci, curator of the Edison Tower museum, Edison Councilman Len Sendelsky, Middlesex County Freeholder Charles Tomaro and former state Sen. Peter Barnes III (D-Middlesex), who is now a Middlesex County Superior Court judge.
Zederbaum said he received a number of donations from local businesses including pavers from Clayton Block, lumber from Fox & Fox and Home Depot of South Plainfield, paint from the Jessen family and topsoil from Kaiser Landscaping.
He also said Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza helped with fundraising and Picture-It Awards in Edison created signs.
Carlucci, curator of the Thomas Edison Center at Menlo Park, said she is very pleased with Zederbaum’s Eagle Scout project.
“Steven created a new interpretative sign on the historic site of the Sarah Jordan Boarding House fitting in with our other kiosks, maintaining uniformity to this important place,” she said. “The beautifully constructed information signage outlines the history with text and images of the boarding house, which was located on the corner of Christie Street and Tower Road. This outstanding project now provides another important source of information to the thousands of visitors we host each year.”
For more information, visit www.menloparkmuseum.org.
