What Manhattan address housed Tesla's 1887 laboratory?
Answer
89 Liberty Street
The Manhattan address that housed Tesla’s 1887 laboratory was 89 Liberty Street.
Tesla’s financial backers, Charles Peck and Alfred Brown, rented the room after helping establish the Tesla Electric Company in New York. The modest laboratory stood upstairs above the Globe Stationery & Printing Company in Manhattan’s financial district. Its equipment included a workbench, stove, generator, and measuring instruments.
Tesla worked there while developing and demonstrating his alternating-current system. The experiments led to his rotating magnetic field and induction motor, crucial foundations of modern AC power. George Westinghouse later acquired licenses to Tesla’s AC patents, helping bring the system into commercial use.
A common mix-up is Tesla’s later Manhattan addresses. He moved to 175 Grand Street in 1889, then to 33–35 South Fifth Avenue and later East Houston Street. Those were subsequent laboratories, not the 1887 Liberty Street site.