thumb|200px|A sketch of the Pearl Street Station
Pearl Street Station was Thomas Edison's first commercial power plant in the United States. It was located at 255–257 Pearl Street in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City, just south of Fulton Street on a site measuring . The station was built by the Edison Illuminating Company, under the direction of Francis Upton, hired by Thomas Edison. It had a generation capacity of 600KW DC,
History
Pearl Street Station consumed coal for fuel; it began with six 100 kW dynamos, and it started generating electricity on , serving an initial load of 400 lamps to 82 customers. By 1884, Pearl Street Station was serving 508 customers with 10,164 lamps.
The station was originally powered by custom-made Porter-Allen high-speed steam engines designed to provide 175 horsepower at 700rpm, but these proved to be unreliable with their sensitive governors. They were removed and replaced with new engines from Armington & Sims that proved to be much more suitable for Edison's dynamos. The district, so named because of its importance in the history of electric power, contained several other power stations such as the Excelsior Power Company Building. The station burned down in 1890, destroying all but one dynamo that is now kept in the Greenfield Village Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. It was rebuilt, and ran until , when it was decommissioned, since larger and more efficient plants had been built nearby.