# Fire destroys much of the West Orange manufacturing plant

Date: 1914

## The fact

On 9 December 1914 a fire destroyed a large part of [Edison](/people/thomas-edison)’s West Orange manufacturing plant. Phonograph and film production were interrupted. Rebuilding followed. This Fact is the fire and the documented loss, not a morality play.

## Context

Celluloid, chemicals and wooden structures made the campus vulnerable. Employees fought the fire. Insurance and later reconstruction are separate instruments.

Thomas Edison is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

NPS’s 1914-fire page and Edison Papers independently date the blaze.

Official or archival record: NPS — The 1914 fire at West Orange (https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/historyculture/the-1914-fire.htm; U.S. National Park Service).

## Significance

Workplace-disaster path. High confidence on the date and destruction.

An accident on a named campus is still a welfare Fact. Do not invent a death toll not in the cited files.

## What is established and what is not

Established: 9 December 1914 West Orange fire with major plant loss.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Thomas Edison: https://factrail.ai/people/thomas-edison

## Drivers

- Labour-Market Tightness: https://factrail.ai/drivers/labour-market-tightness

## Sources

- https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/historyculture/the-1914-fire.htm
- https://edison.rutgers.edu/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/us-edison-west-orange-fire-1914