SAVING THE ESTATE

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Some historians say Edison was looking for a low-stress winter homesite; he suffered from neuralgia, nervous tension from overwork. Others say he was on the hunt for tropical vegetable fibers (for use in his incandescent lamps) when he and best friend and business manager Ezra Gilliland came to Florida in 1885. They hit St. Augustine, Cedar Key, Tampa Bay, Sarasota Bay, Charlotte Harbor and finally Punta Rassa, where they heard tales of wild bamboo growing near the Caloosahatchee River, stalks 60 feet tall. Fort Myers, tiny, wild and subtropical was the nearest town

A fisherman showed Edison the old Summerlin place-a former cattle stop that included 660 feet along the river and 1,660 feet inland, chopped in two by a public right-of-way and cattle path (now known as McGregor Boulevard). Edison bought it on the spot, worked out a deal on four acres for Gilliland, and launched into a building project the likes of which Southwest Florida had never seen. "I want to carry everything to excess down here," Edison wrote his caretaker.

Receipts show that each man spent about $12,000 to build and furnish their houses-large sums in those days. Tons of muck, oil coke, phosphorous and guano were dumped on the land to improve the soil. The first barge of building supplies arrived in January of 1886. The longest dock on the Caloosahatchee was extended to the deep-water channel (over 800 feet) to unload the very first pre-cut timber kit houses in the country-two-story wood-frame structures sheathed in spruce clapboard.

"It makes you wonder about a man as smart as Edison going to the expense of floating in Maine spruce when he was surrounded by virgin Florida heart pine, the finest building material you could get," says Flaherty. "Spruce is yum yum, a delicacy to termites and all manner of vermin. You don't build houses with spruce down here."

Edison and his new wife, Mina, arrived to inspect the property in March 1886 and returned a year later. Both houses were nearly identical "conservative interpretations of the Queen Anne style popular during the last quarter of the 19th century," according to a city-commissioned Historic Structures Report: deepbracketed eaves, symmetrical windows and doors, multi-chromatic color scheme, cedar wood shingles. Gracious rambling buildings with a spectacular view of the Caloosahatchee.

One thing is for certain: "This was not a home engineered for Florida," confirms architect Wiley Parker, one of a team of experts overseeing restoration efforts. "There aren't even overhangs to keep rain off the porch."

On the other hand, no one is complaining about the electrician. A super Edison dynamo provided DC power. Marvelous Edison Electroliers hung throughout the houses. The dock was illuminated with electric lights. Edison's electric launch Reliance was moored near a boat house where the inventor, lore says, used to sit for hours, thinking, holding a fishing pole, line in the water and no hook.

No Edison estate would be complete without a laboratory, which the inventor fully equipped and staffed (at a cost of $16,000) to begin experiments with bamboo filaments, a ship-to-shore telegraph and coal-thermal electricity.

When they left in the spring of 1887, however, the Edisons did not return for 14 years and the house stood vacant, watched over by a caretaker. A feud had erupted between Edison and Gilliland over the sale of patent rights to the Edison phonograph. By 1890, Edison ordered the water shut off at Gilliland's portion of the property. Gilliland eventually sold his portion to Ambrose McGregor of the Standard Oil fortune and disappeared into the ignominy of history as the man who ripped off Edison.

Edison and his wife finally came back in 1901; they returned, nearly every year, usually in February, until the inventor died in 1931. In 1906, Edison bought the Gilliland property and lined the avenue through his property and all the way into downtown with royal palms that stand to this day. Edison's gift inspired the city's official nickname: The City of Palms.

For the next four years, the estate underwent extensive remodeling and reconstruction, much of it dictated and supervised by Mina, who quickly became a leading figure in Fort Myers community affairs. Archives reveal her obsession with excruciating details. Both houses were remodeled, again, and the Edison kitchen moved to the guest house. The character of the estate now approached the modern craftsman style: built-in cabinetry, large openings between living and dining spaces, multi-pane doors and window sash. The wraparound porches were widened. The first swimming pool in Florida was dug there in 1910 (built with-what else?-Edison Portland Cement).

The Edison botanical gardens began to take shape during this period. The formal, family and social gardens surrounding the homesites include 70 varieties of palm and all manner of fruit trees and flowering shrubs; today, 14 championship trees are listed at the site. Rare and exotic flora share space with native Florida vegetation, everything carefully designed and plotted by the inventor and his wife.

"This is just as much a botanical gardens as it is a historical site," says director Pendleton. The existing fabulous gardens, internationally regarded, will be "phenomenal" when restoration is completed, she says. "There are historic houses and there are historic gardens, but it is very rare for an estate to have both."

Another flurry of building activity began in 1916, the year Ford purchased the house and two-acre property next door. Over the next few years, Edison completely overhauled the water and electrical systems; in 1919 the ingenious cistern was built and the inventor turned off his dynamo in favor of the city's AC power-with the requisite monthly electric bill.

In 1928, much to the chagrin of Fort Myers citizens, Ford convinced his pal to let him dismantle and reassemble Edison's lab at his historic Greenfield Village complex in Dearborn, Mich. Another laboratory, built east of McGregor Boulevard and dedicated to the rubber experiments which dominated Edison's last few years, was built by Ford as a replacement. The new lab, still standing today, features belt-driven machinery, obsolete even in those days. Today, it is a low-light, eerie place filled with green glass tubes and machinery.

Wheelchair bound, deaf and subsisting almost totally on milk, the white-haired inventor was often seen rolling across McGregor, going to and from his lab. He stayed a little longer during his 1931 visit, all the way through June. A few weeks later, he suffered a debilitating stroke at his New Jersey home. The "man who invented tomorrow" died Oct. 18, 1931. Several months later, Ford unveiled the V8 he had developed with his friend looking on.

Mina continued to visit, exploring plans to turn the estate into a college or museum. Finally, a few months before she died Aug. 24, 1947, she bequeathed the estate to Fort Myers. At her death, she was, perhaps, the city's most beloved resident: a generous, extroverted woman who pioneered an organized approach to civic improvements with her regular Round Table meetings at the estate with city leaders and businessmen.

In her last meeting, right in the living room where she sat many nights reading with her husband, Mina voiced her wishes for the estate's future. But many were never followed.

"That will also change," promises Mayor Humphrey, who has asked the new trustees to ":please always keep Mrs. Edison's desires in mind."

No one has lived in the estate since 1947, when it was roped off and opened for limited tours. It eventually became a full-time, major Florida tourist destination, the sixth most-visited historic home in the country (just behind Monticello and ahead of The Hermitage). It costs $18 to see the whole place now, and it is fabulous and informative.

So much history has disappeared,.

but Pendleton is optimistic that visitors can revisit the past: "The spirit of Edison and Ford has never vanished from the estate. We have been incredible trustees of the Edison myth and legend." Aesthetic improvements will enhance the property's river presence, a major aspect to life here. "Vistas, sight lines, the feeling of Edison and Ford sitting on the porch in 1920s clothing, catching the breeze-those improvements will definitely strengthen the experience of any visitor to the estate," she says.

The most obvious alteration of history: all nine acres of Edison's research and botanical gardens east of McGregor were uprooted and replaced with asphalt and visitor amenities. The 1928 storehouse garage is now a gift shop. Growth was stopped on the famous walking banyan tree (second or third largest in the world, with a canopy 400 feet across). Mina and Tom Edison, avid gardeners and bird watchers, have been rolling in their graves ever since.

"It was unfortunate, but when this was done, there was nowhere else to park cars for the hundreds of thousands of people who were visiting each year," sighs Pendleton, who says the city has now secured nearby property for parking. "Restoring the east side of McGregor will be the most obvious dramatic change to the estate."