Originally designed in 1899 by Tesla, the Wardenclyffe Laboratory and Tower was constructed at this location in 1901. Funded by a group of wealthy industrialists, the stated purpose of the facility was to provide wireless communication through the 187-foot tower.

Tesla's ulterior motive to was to construct a facility that could transmit wireless electrical energy. According to the story, investor J.P. Morgan (who had contributed $150,000 to the construction of Wardenclyffe) withdrew from the project when he couldn't foresee a way to meter and charge people for energy consumption.

Tesla kept Wardenclyffe afloat for years with a series of manufactures (like the Tesla coil and the Tesla turbine), but failings on the business end of the project led the facility to be foreclosed on in 1915. The tower was blown up with dynamite in 1917 so that German submarines couldn't use it as a landmark.

Today, the remnants of the Wardenclyffe still stand, but are privately owned and near sale.

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In 1891, Nikola Tesla established a laboratory at 46 and 48 E. Houston St. At the laboratory, he demonstrated the possibilities of wireless power transmission by lighting electric lamps wirelessly.

Tesla also prepared his demonstrations for the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago at this location. Among the responsibilities of lighting the fair with AC power and fluorescent bulbs (created with the collaboration of George Westinghouse), Tesla also created whimsical demonstrations of electrical power like the Egg of Columbus.

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Soul singer Donny Hathaway's body was discovered on the sidewalk beneath his fifteenth-floor hotel room of New York's Essex House on the night of January 13, 1979. The glass had been removed from the window of his room and the door was locked from the inside. His death was ruled a suicide.

Hathaway was a songwriter, musician and producer who worked with artists like Curtis Mayfield, Aretha Franklin and the Staple Singers, but he was best known for his duets with Roberta Flack "Where is the Love" and "You've Got a Friend" in the early '70s.

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Nikola Tesla, inventor and engineer, lived at The New Yorker Hotel in rooms 3327 and 3328 from 1933-1943. Although Tesla had enormous contributions to several fields (electronics, radio, wireless communications and more), he had never attempted to exploit his research for financial gain.

After Tesla died in his hotel room on January 7, 1943, the safe in room 3327 with his papers on "Tesla's Death Ray" (a theoretical weaponized form of his research) was broken into and the research papers stolen. They have never been recovered.

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On November 24, 1905, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz opened a photography gallery originally known as the "Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession."

One of the first permanent photo-galleries in New York City, it closed its doors in 1908, reopening later that year as simply "291." Stieglitz organized some of the first American showings by artists such as Rodin and Matisse. From this location, he published his legendary photo journal Camera Work, and twelve issues of 291. In June 1917, Stieglitz closed down the 291.

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