# Fire destroys Tesla’s New York laboratory as Niagara generators come online

Date: 1895

## The fact

On 13 March 1895 fire destroyed [Tesla](/people/nikola-tesla)’s New York laboratory, including notes and equipment. ETHW treats the fire as a turning point from visual invention toward empirical rebuild. Niagara’s Adams plant started the same year; that is a separate Fact.

## Context

Celluloid, coils and rented floors made laboratories fragile. This is not the West Orange 1914 fire (Edison). Do not invent a casualty list not in the cited pages.

Nikola Tesla 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

IEEE/ETHW and Smithsonian Magazine independently record the 1895 laboratory fire.

Official or archival record: Engineering and Technology History Wiki — Nikola Tesla (https://ethw.org/Nikola_Tesla; IEEE / ETHW).

## Significance

Workplace-disaster path. High confidence on the year and loss of papers and kit.

A fire is not a current-war cartoon. Keep Edison’s campus fire on [Edison](/people/thomas-edison)’s page.

## What is established and what is not

Established: 1895 destruction of Tesla’s New York laboratory. Not established: arson by a named rival, or a complete inventory of lost manuscripts.

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

- Nikola Tesla: https://factrail.ai/people/nikola-tesla

## Drivers

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

## Sources

- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/extraordinary-life-nikola-tesla-180967758/
- https://ethw.org/Nikola_Tesla

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/us-tesla-lab-fire-1895