Explore the Queens home of inventor Lewis Latimer
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Listen to the 10-minute bonus episode for the Lewis Latimer House which takes recordings I couldn’t fit in like the family piano, additional artwork and poetry of Lewis, and more on the Latimer family’s creativity. You can listen by joining Someone Lived Here’s Patreon at any level.
In this episode of the podcast Someone Lived Here, Kendra brings you to the Lewis Latimer House in Queens, NY. Lewis Latimer was an inventor and electrical pioneer who shaped the history of objects we still use every day. He was African American and the son of slaves.
While you walk through the Queen Anne style home you’ll learn about Lewis Latimer and the ups and downs of his career. Through his journal entries and poetry, you’ll better understand his relationship with his work, his race, and his family. He was a poet and an artist so you’ll hear one of his poems entitled The Worker.
Thank you to Alex Unthank for guiding us through the home and teaching us more about Lewis Latimer. The Lewis Latimer House Museum is a member of the Historic House Trust.
Music by Tim Cahill. Icon artwork by Ben Kirk.
YouTube Video of Lewis Latimer podcast episode with captions and imagery
Below is a transcript for the second episode of Someone Lived Here at the Lewis Latimer House in Flushing, Queens. If you have any questions about the show or suggestions on how to make it more accessible please reach out at someonelivedhere@gmail.com.
Transcript by Sam Fishkind
Kendra Gaylord: This week we’re at the Lewis Latimer house. This house sits in a park in Flushing, Queens, and it looks like it’s stepped out of another century. The home was almost demolished, and its existence is because a community worked hard to keep it standing. The reason they work so hard is because the man who once lived there was remarkable. Welcome to “Someone Lived Here”, a podcast about the places cool people call home. I’m your host, Kendra Gaylord. Every other Monday this season, we’ll be bringing you to a cool house in New York and tell you the complicated stories of the people who once lived there.
Kendra Gaylord: Today we’re right next to Leavitt’s Park on 1 37th Street, Flushing, Queens. It’s a Queen Anne-style house that was built in 1889. It’s two stories and the paint color switches between beige and red on fish-scale siding, which is the technical name, and less slimy than it sounds. The windows are also special, with a series of smaller glass squares lining the top pane. We liked the window so much it was actually the inspiration for our logo. Thanks to Ben Kirk for drawing that. To learn more about Lewis Latimer and his house, I spoke with Alex Unthank. She’s the education program associate at the Lewis Latimer House.
Alex Unthank: Lewis Latimer was a[n] electrical pioneer, as we say here, but he was an inventor, and he was also a patent law expert. And the main thing that he is famous for inventing is the carbon filament for the light bulb. So while that is certainly very fascinating, he also had a pretty incredible life story. He was born in 1848, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. So this means that at the time that he was born, we still had slavery in the country and he was born free in Massachusetts, which was a free state. He lived with his mother, and he’s actually the youngest of four. He’s got two older brothers and an older sister. And when he was 12 years old, the Civil War breaks out. Both of his older brothers enlisted in the Union Army, and when he was 16, he actually lied about his age, and adjusted his age on his papers to enlist in the Navy, to fight for the Union. This is something that a lot of African Americans did, I mean, relatively a lot, to try and add to the numbers to fight on behalf of the Union. And they only conducted the census I think every like 10 years. So at that time, it was pretty easy to get away with fudging your numbers. And so he enlists in the Navy and he works on a gunboat.
Kendra Gaylord: He was a landsman on the USS Massassoit. The ship’s main duties were protecting Union ships traveling between New York and Virginia. The gunboat, and presumably Latimer, took part in the Battle of Howlett’s House, and carried a vital message to a general in North Carolina. They weren’t able to send that message by telephone because it hadn’t been invented yet, but we’ll get into that later.
Alex Unthank: While he was in the Navy, he got interested in technical drawing. I feel like I talk about technical drawings all day. Not everyone’s as familiar with it. So technical drawing, as opposed to any regular old type is a drawing that accomplishes a very specific task. A pretty easy to imagine example of a technical drawing is an architectural drawing like a blueprint. And so this is the type of work that he was interested in. So Lewis actually finds a job working as an office boy, similar to what an assistant or an intern would do, working at a patent law office.
Kendra Gaylord: The law office, Crosby and Gould, hired draftsmen who would turn inventors’ sketches into drafts that could be presented to the U.S. Patent Office. During his time as an office boy, he would watch the draftsmen and purchase the necessary equipment and books so he could practice at home. Over his 11 years at Crosby and Gould, he worked his way from an office boy making $3 a week to Head Draftsman making 20. His wages as Head Draftsman were still $5 lower than the salary received by white draftsmen.
Alex Unthank: So while he was working at this firm, he does actually get married to a woman named Mary Wilson. And the two of them do eventually have two daughters. But he also meets an important man, who would put him on the path to be becoming interested in inventing. And that person is Alexander Graham Bell. And Alexander Graham Bell, for those who don’t know, invented the telephone. Alexander Bell already has the prototype; or his version of what he wants to use for the telephone, but he needs help making the actual patent. And actually, both of them work outside of their day jobs on this project together. And Lewis not only does the draft, but he also does the legal writing that accompanies the patent. And just to give a sense at this time, this is in the 1870’s – there’s a lot of activity around, electricity; inventing… you know, you have other inventors like Tesla, Edison, and all of those big names that we still hear and talk about today, Alexander Graham Bell wanted to improve upon the telegraph, which had been invented and enabled people to use sound like a Morse Code, but not like voice or vocal sounds, but Alexander Bell wasn’t the only person that invented such a listening device. Because Lewis was such a skilled patent draftsman, and understood the law so well, they were able to get their patents submitted and approved by the government a couple of hours before someone else submitted a similar plan. So, it really ends up being a race to the patent office.
Kendra Gaylord: In 1879, Lewis moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut and works for an inventor known for his ego. But before we leave Boston completely, I wanted to talk with Alex about his mother and father’s escape from slavery.
Alex Unthank: When I talk about Lewis, I do like to ground it in his place in history and give some context to the time in which he was born into. So, as I mentioned, Lewis was born free, which obviously means that there was another alternative, which is that he would have been born enslaved. So, here’s a photo of George Latimer, who is Lewis’ father. If you look at that picture, most people immediately notice that he looks white; or fair-skinned. And he was actually mixed-race; he was the product of some type of abuse, sexual abuse wherein his mother was enslaved and his father was a slave-holder. So, that was pretty typical; perpetuated abuse that we had in our country’s history. George was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and he likely worked on a tobacco plantation. That area was known for tobacco. And in 1842, he was married to Rebecca, who is Lewis’s mother. The two of them were allowed to get married even though they actually were living and working on different plantations , which caused them to have a hard time having a relationship in the way that we today know and kind of take for granted; our relationships. He certainly had a very limited amount of time that they were able to spend together, and when the two of them realized they were pregnant with their first child, they actually decided that they were going to try to escape. The two of them escaped by utilizing the fact that George Latimer looked pretty white, and he dressed as a slave-holder would have dressed, and his wife Rebecca, who we actually don’t have a photo of, but we do know that she was of a darker complexion – she dressed as his slave. And so the two of them were able to kind of hide in plain sight. This wasn’t a unusual sight for people to see; somebody traveling around with their servant or a slave. They make it all the way to Boston, and once they arrive in Boston, George was actually recognized by somebody who knew his slave-holder, and at that point was pretty immediately put into prison. At this time in the early 1840s, Boston was kind of a hub of abolitionist activities. And so while George was imprisoned, Rebecca was actually protected by abolitionists in the area and was kept safe. So she wasn’t actually caught along with him, but George actually landed himself in the middle of this whole abolitionist movement and they were working to try and change the laws that enforced any officials to imprison fugitive slaves. So, at this point in our country, we have a pretty huge fugitive slave debate where people who are escaping to free states are pretty much staying in free states. And the southern slave-holders are viewing these people as their properties. So, they’re trying to maintain their numbers. In states like Boston , and other free states, even if someone says, you know, “this is my enslaved person”, they’re not really processing that. They’re not doing anything to make sure that people are returned, and this is making southern slave-holders very angry. And eventually they pass the Fugitive Slave Act, which enforces returning of slaves. So you get even the secondary economy of slave catchers or like bounty hunters essentially who are going and finding enslaved people. If anyone’s seen “12 Years a Slave”, that’s kind of the plot of that movie – ’cause you don’t necessarily have to be enslaved to be caught if somebody says that they’ve seen you before. The law just takes it on their authority. George was really lucky in that he landed in such – in a way where it’s right in the middle of all of this energy. So, a lot of abolitionists in the area actually rallied to his defense; people like William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass were writing about George’s case and they even made a journal called “The Latimer Journal” in North Star, which was an abolitionist paper that published the events of his case and other similar cases. So people were able to stay informed. ‘.
Kendra Gaylord: They enacted two petitions, which had over 25,000 signatures and were delivered in barrels to the State Capitol building. In the end, it wasn’t the legal process that free George Latimer. When his owner came to collect George, his freedom was purchased for $400. George was reunited with Rebecca, who was still not technically free, and the two had their first son named George. Lewis Latimer was born five years later. Now we’re going to continue the story of Lewis’s life, and find out how he came to own this home in Queens. When he first moved to Bridgeport, Lewis found work at Fallensbees Machine Shop. During that time, the inventor, Hiram Maxim, came through the shop and was surprised to see a Latimer’s skilled work. After finding out he was the Head Draftsman and Crosby and Gould; a place Maxim had once worked there himself, he hired him on the spot. In Lewis’ journal, he wrote, “within a week from the time we first met, I was installed in Mr. Maxim’s office busily following my vocation of mechanical draftsman, and acquainting myself with every brand of electrical, incandescent light construction and operation.” Alex is going to tell us a little bit more about Hiram Maxim and Lewis’ work with him.
Alex Unthank: He is someone who I certainly hadn’t heard of before I started working here, a little less -known at the time. He was very prominent inventor, and he came from a family of inventors actually, and he had invented something called a “Maxim gun”, which was an early automatic weapon. And that’s kind of how he made his fortune – but by the time that Lewis was working with him, he was working as owner of the United States Electric Lighting Company. And so, Maxim was actually very interested in electric lighting – and as was Edison. So the two of them definitely were aware of each other and were kind of competing with each other on this race to create electric light. So when Lewis started working for Maxim, Edison had actually already invented and patented the first light bulb. And so, Edison’s version of the light bulb, while it was very exciting that we had electric light and the day was upon us, it wasn’t yet used in the home of the everyday American. Edison’s version of the light bulb used bamboo for the filament, which was a really good conductor of heat. It would heat up really well and it would glow, but it didn’t stay lit that long yet. So, still improvements needed to be made.
Kendra Gaylord: Edison’s bamboo filaments only lasted a few days at most. Lewis invented the carbon filament, which made electric lights more affordable and longer-lasting.
Alex Unthank: He actually only works for Maxim for three years, but he does a lot at that company. He ends up being sent to oversee the installation of these electric lights, in major buildings in New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, London. So at this time, early 1870’s, for an African American to not only be traveling for work; pretty much freely around, but also that he is serving as a representative for Maxim’s company, but also overseeing – so he’s in a leadership role – large groups of workers. So, I know that when he was in Montreal, he actually had to teach himself how to speak French in order to communicate with the workers there, and he eventually is sent to London, which is supposed to be a year-long trip, and he is with his family, and as I had mentioned before about the journals, this is one of the few times where he kind of does speak about his personal life. When he’s in London, he has a really hard time dealing with the people there. They’re extremely…they treat him extremely poorly; and they don’t seem to understand that like he actually IS in charge because he invented the technology. They don’t seem to understand that connection, and he does write about this a little bit in his journal.
Kendra Gaylord: Lewis finished his project quickly. The opening of the factory was supposed to take 12 months, but he finished it in 9. When he returned to the U.S., He found that his job was not waiting for him. Maxim was not known for his loyalty. Lewis briefly moved to an electric company in Brooklyn. And in 1883, Lewis and Mary had a baby girl, Emma Jeanette. Soon after that, Lewis Latimer had other big news. In his journal. He wrote, “the Edison people sent for me and I became one of the firm at 65, 5th Avenue.”
Alex Unthank: Edison would have known about him. He would have probably heard about this guy who was improving his inventions at his rival company. And Edison was certainly intrigued. And in 1883, Lewis Latimer goes to work for Edison in the Engineering Department as a Chief Draftsman. And soon he buys this house that we’re in now, today. But he goes to work for Edison’s company, which was at that time the Edison Electric Light Company, and then it becomes General Electric. So, soon after he joined the company in the Engineering Department, he actually gets transferred to a newly-created legal department. So at this point, Edison’s getting sued a lot over patents and copyright infringement and all types of things. Lewis finds himself in a unique position that is that he is an engineer and an inventor and understands electric lighting inside and out like most other people do not, but he also has over 11 years working in patent law, so he actually is uniquely-qualified to represent Edison in court. So he’s actually operating as a lawyer without a law degree, and I’ve also failed to mention, he’s pretty much entirely self-taught, , in general. So, and most people at this time…There wasn’t a bar association in the same way that…so, you know, everyone was a lawyer, but t’s still pretty unprecedented for him to be arguing in the court of law.
Kendra Gaylord: Lewis was 35 when he joined Edison Edison Electric Company. During his time there, he bought the home we are in now. He built a laboratory on the back. He had a second daughter, Louisa Rebecca. He invented an apparatus for cooling and disinfecting, a lot, like a window AC unit. He wrote a textbook so electricity could be understood by the average person. He was also a member of the Edison Pioneers. The home has copies of photos of the Edison Pioneers’ annual meetings.
Alex Unthank: Then for me, these photos are a really good window into his everyday life. That’s him there.
Kendra Gaylord: Oh yeah.
Alex Unthank: And that’s a photo of them in what looks to be a boardroom. He’s the only person of color in this group, and I imagine that he a lot of times is the only person of color. So, it was kind of serves to put me in his headspace.
Kendra Gaylord: But Lewis did much more beyond his work. He wrote poetry, and sketched, and painted portraits of his family. If that wasn’t enough. He was also an extremely active member of the community in Queens and beyond.
Alex Unthank: He did help to establish the church, which we still have connection with today. And he also taught English to people who are immigrating, to this part of New York, as well as, you know, keeping up with his own civil rights type of activism work as well. So, it’s kind of hard to imagine that he would have any time leftover. Makes me feel lazy. But, he was very active.
Kendra Gaylord: Lewis worked in the sphere of Thomas Edison until 1911. In the previous years, competitors were merged, boards were created, and then consolidated. Lewis Latimer was 63 when the board he was on stopped existing. Lewis then became a consultant. It was around this time that Lewis Latimer drew an illustration entitled “My Situation”. In the image, a man who looks and is labeled as Latimer is walking a plank over a big ocean. The plank is labeled “Hammer Consulting Engineers” – that’s the new consulting employer he has. Latimer is holding a giant drafting tool and using it as a balancing stick. The tool is labeled “30 Years of Service”, but there is a weight on the left side of his tool, and it is labeled “65 Years Old”. The ocean on the left side of the plank says “Wide Wide World”. He writes below, “which way will he fall?” In 1922, 10 years later, Lewis Latimer retired. His vision was deteriorating. He became a grandfather of Gerald, and Winifred Latimer-Norman, which brings us to another part of this story: Winifred Latimer is the reason there’s a house to stand in.
Alex Unthank: So after Lewis and his wife passed, and his daughters continued to have ownership of the house, the house eventually changed hands, and I know they had tenants for a bit, but then I don’t know how many other owners may have; how many other people may have owned the house after that…but by 1988, the house was actually scheduled to be demolished. And by the 80s, Flushing looked probably a lot more like it does today: it was certainly more densely-populated; and also Queens was more densely-populated in general – New York as a whole. I mean, it’s not that long ago. And you have, you know, the subways and all of the things that changed neighborhoods. So by the time that the house was scheduled to be demolished, I don’t know what was supposed to be built, if it was, you know, a condo, or if it was a mall or something like that, but it must’ve been some developers that had some power because Winifred was successful in getting the house landmark status. So, she formed a committee of people, they had to prove the historical value of the home and it was approved. But even though it did garner the landmark status, I assume that whatever was in play, the wheels were already in motion. So in order to save the house, they did actually have to move it. So what they did was they picked it up, they put it on a flatbed truck, and they rolled it on down Main Street, so the house actually now sits on city park property – and that actually happens to a fair amount of our landmarks in New York. They do sometimes get moved. Park land has their stricter land use laws. So I like to think of it as a safe haven. At that point, the house actually gets moved here, [and] sits here for a while before it actually undergoes the restoration. So we have some photos of the house as it looked like in the 80s. It does show the transformation at the outside. The porch was enclosed, the siding was replaced, and it looked more typical of what you see in this area and also in general in suburban parts of Queens. And so when they restored the house, it was a pretty lengthy process; they had to redo the siding, exchange on the windows back to what they originally would have looked like- also, I’m sure they had to do some extensive work on the interior of the house; and there are certain things that were missing that I’ve seen in photos. Like, for example, there would have been a fireplace; we don’t have that anymore, and I don’t know at what point that would have been taken out. We got the shutters, new shutters, we love them, and you know, the porch, we had to take the porch back out, but there’s also intricate woodcarving on the frame of the house that had to been redone. So the restoration process was certainly lengthy and involved but I think it really paid off because it’s such a gem and now, every time I walk around, I’m like, “is this under every building?”
Kendra Gaylord: Winifred helped move the house, raise money for the museum, and even wrote a book about Lewis Latimer using his letters and journals, which we’ve referenced a lot today. There’s one more room I want Alex to show us before we leave.
Alex Unthank: And then in here, this is our tinker lab. So today this space is used, primarily as education space. We call it our ‘tinker lab’, and so it’s essentially a maker space. We do STEM and STEAM programs for kids from kindergarten through 12th. This is the room that he used for his lab. So that’s why we liked that symmetry. So this is the addition.
Kendra Gaylord: I really like that a room that was witnessing inventions in 1890 still gets to see things being made over a century later. A year after celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, Mary Latimer passed away. Lewis Latimer died four years later, but those years without Mary were hard. Lewis had a stroke that paralyzed half of his body. With the goal of cheering him up, his friends and family compiled his poetry for his 77th birthday. One of the poems in his collection is entitled “The Worker”: “Up in the morning early / before the break of day, / to eat if I had food to eat / and to my work away. / When night has spread its shadows / over the country and the town, / I turned my tired feet toward home / and gladly lie me down. / And it’s night and day and morning / Through each succeeding year, / underneath the spur of keen necessity / or the presence of a fear, / a fear that haunts me ever, through each succeeding year / that those who give them means to live / may take the means away.”
Kendra Gaylord: The Lewis Latimer House is open to the general public Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays from 12-5. Thank you for listening to “Someone Lived Here”. I’m your host, Kendra Gaylord. Be sure to subscribe so you can be the first to hear the next episode on Sailor Snug Harbor, a retirement home for sailors that operated for almost 150 years. Thank you to Alex Unthank and Ran Yan from the Lewis Latimer House, and thank you to Winifred Latimer-Norman and Lily Patterson for their book on Lewis Latimer. Music is by Tim Cahill and podcast artwork is from Ben Kirk. If you have any notes or recommendations for the show, send us an email at someonelivedhere@gmail.com. To learn more about the show, go to someonelivedhere.com or follow us on Instagram.
