Electric lighting began illuminating the streets of America in the late 19th century. Prior to that, oil lamps followed by gas lamps lit early America. Two key figures that led to adopting electric lighting in America were Charles Brush and Thomas Edison. Brush invented an electric dynamo arc light system which he demonstrated in Clevland, Ohio’s Public Square in 1879 (see featured image above). According to Chris Ronayne, one of Brush’s arc lamps produced the equivalent glow of 4,000 candles. Compared to oil or gas lamps which required someone to light them every evening, electric lighting was more efficient and less expensive.
The first municipality to obtain electric lighting was Wabash, Indiana in 1880. The town purchased and installed Brush’s arc lighting system with 4 lamps atop the courthouse, which illuminated the small town.
Brush deployed his arc lighting system to several other cities across America such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Chicago. Thomson Houston Company bought Brush Electric Company in 1889 and later merged with the Edison General Electric Co. in 1892 to form General Electric.
Thomas Edison invented the first practical and commercially viable incandescent light bulb in 1880 and developed the first modern electric utility system at the Peal Street Station in lower Manhattan, New York City in 1882. The location of the Pearl Street Station can be seen on the 1894 Sanborn Fire Insurance map (the closest date to 1882 for Manhattan) below at 255-257 Peal Street (in blue labeled buildings vacant). According to Matthew Josephson in Edison: A Biography, the Pearl Street Station was serving 508 customers with 10,164 lamps by 1884, but burned down in 1890.
A few weeks after building steam powered dynamos (generators) fed by coal at the New York Pearl Street Station in September of 1882, the Appleton, Wisconsin residence of Henry James Rogers known as Hearthstone, became the first in the U.S. to be lighted with a water-powered dynamo through the Edison power station and electric system. Rogers was the manager of the Appleton Pulp and Paper Mill company, which also benefited from Edison’s hydroelectric power station, both shown below on the 1895 Sanborn Insurance map of Appleton, Wisconsin.
Although the Edison Electric Light Company installed street lighting at the intersections of 7th and 15th Streets with Pennsylvania Avenue NW in the city of Washington D.C. by 1881, public funding of streetlights and even the White House did not happen until a decade later in 1891. The 1894 District of Columbia Engineering Department Street Lamps map below shows this slow adoption of electric lighting with just 327 electric lamps compared to 747 oil and 6,246 gas lamps in the city.
In contrast to the White House, Iolani Palace in Honolulu, Hawaii was electrically lighted by 1886, followed by the city of Honolulu in 1888. While circumnavigating the world in 1881 King Kalākaua of the Hawaiian Kingdom experienced the electrical exhibition at the World Fair in Paris, France and subsequently met with Thomas Edison in New York on his way back to Hawaii. Edison’s incandescent bulbs were demonstrated to the King, convincing him of adopting the technology in his Kingdom. The 1914 Sanborn map below shows Iolani Palace in pink with the label “Executive Bldg. Territory of Hawaii” (the Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown in 1893 and became a U.S. Territory in 1898). It also indicates “no heat, lights: elec-” showing that the building still had electric lighting.
This brief exploration of the early adoption of electric lighting in America demonstrates how maps can be utilized to investigate the historical development of this significant technology.