Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum The Thomas Edison Center at Menlo Park, also known as the Menlo Park Museum / Edison Memorial Tower, is a memorial to inventor and businessman Thomas Alva Edison, located in the Menlo Park area of Edison, Middlesex County, New Jersey. The tower was dedicated on February 11, 1938, on what would have been the inventor's 91st birthday. The tower marks the location of Edison's Menlo Park laboratory, the world's first organized research and development site. He came to Menlo Park in 1876, the area was then known as Raritan Township, and later changed
Menlo Park Mall from the shopping venue. The structure was fully enclosed between June 1966 and December 1967. After the remodeling, it was renamed Menlo Park Mall. The original center was anchored by Bamberger's, Montgomery Ward (opened May 1960), a small, dry goods only, JCPenney, a two-level Woolworth, as well as two grocery stores: ShopRite (later a Pathmark), and Pantry Pride, later a Big Buy. Originally a one level structure, the fully enclosed mall (post-1967) had a lack of skylights, with only shaded windows along the sides of the ceiling. The low lighting made the interior quite dark, as was customary with interiors