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{
    "pk": 62082,
    "title": "A Spatial History of Thomas Edison National Historical Park: Challenges and Opportunities",
    "subtitle": null,
    "abstract": "This essay examines how the spatial history of Thomas Edison National Historical Park, New Jersey, reveals long-time tensions between exclusivity and public accessibility. At the center of this study is Glenmont, the Edison family home, located within Llewellyn Park—the nation’s first gated residential community. While Llewellyn Park embodied 19th-century elite ideals of seclusion and pastoral retreat, residents like the Edison family operation relied upon the labor of predominantly female domestic workers and the industrial workforce at Edison’s nearby laboratories. I draw on archival research, cultural landscape studies, and heritage theory to illuminate how class-based insulation at Llewellyn Park both obscured and depended on working-class labor. I argue that these dynamics continue to shape visitor experiences at Thomas Edison National Historical Park: the laboratories remain easily accessible on West Orange’s Main Street, while seeing Glenmont requires a multistep, carefully managed process that deters casual visitation. This geography risks reinforcing cultural divides by privileging narratives of one person’s inventions over those of the working-class labor that actualized those ideas. By situating Glenmont within broader debates on gated communities, universal design, and museum inclusivity, I propose strategies for interpreting the invisible labor that sustained Edison’s household and for re-embedding the estate into its diverse local community. Ultimately, this essay calls for a reimagining of Glenmont not solely as a memorial to Edison’s genius but as a site where histories of work, migration, and community belonging can be made visible and usable for contemporary audiences.",
    "language": "eng",
    "license": {
        "name": "",
        "short_name": "",
        "text": null,
        "url": ""
    },
    "keywords": [],
    "section": "Featured Theme Articles",
    "is_remote": true,
    "remote_url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4fg7k5hv",
    "frozenauthors": [
        {
            "first_name": "Melissa",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Benbow Flowers",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "",
            "department": ""
        }
    ],
    "date_submitted": null,
    "date_accepted": null,
    "date_published": "2026-01-15T08:00:00Z",
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            "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/psf/article/62082/galley/47966/download/"
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}