Cuyahoga Lamp Plant

The Cuyahoga Lamp Plant was one of several production facilities located within GE's NELA Park Headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio. It was housed within Building 328, also known as the Cuyahoga Building. Its peculiar name stems from the old Mohawk Indian word meaning Crooked River - the Cuyahoga River being the main waterway flowing through the city of Cleveland and which feeds into Lake Erie. The Cuyahoga Building was constructed between 1919-1921 and its first occupant was the NELA Lamp Division, which relocated out of the Lamp Laboratory. Its activities briefly diversified into the manufacture of the rapidly growing business of electronic radio valves, a spinoff of GE's lamp division which led directly to the formation of the vast Radio Corporation of America. RCA's electronic tube production moved out again equally quickly, to the much larger Euclid Glass Works when that site became available. The Cuyahoga Building thereafter served as a kind of Pilot Plant, for the production of new lamps and electronic devices under the close supervision of engineers on the NELA Park site. Invariably, once production was running smoothly and volumes began to ramp up, new products would be decentralised to one of the company's other lamp plants, leaving the Cuyahoga operation ready to take on its next new challenge. The factory was closed in 1985.