| Edification value |  |
|---|---|
| Entertainment value |  |
| Should you go? | |
| Time spent | 82 minutes + 45 minutes at the Louis Armstrong Center (see update below) |
| Best thing I saw or learned | This place feels so real. It’s like Louis and Lucille Armstrong just left the room to get you an iced tea, and they’ll be back in a jiffy. Nothing is labeled, no velvet ropes. The Armstrongs’ iron (or very good facsimile) still sits in their closet. I strongly suspect their air conditioners cool some of the rooms. More than any other house museum I’ve visited so far, this place still feels like a home. |
UPDATE: JUNE 2024
I first visited the Louis Armstrong House in July of 2017. As I mentioned in my 2017 review (below), the Louis Armstrong House had plans to build a new visitor center on a vacant lot across the street from Louis and Lucille’s house. That finally came to fruition in 2023 and so I recently returned to see the Louis Armstrong Center. I also re-took the tour, but rather than rewrite the whole review I’m tacking on this addendum (pre-dendum? fore-dendum?) to say a few words about the new exhibit, and how it goes with the house.
The new building is modern, fit to the low-rise residential neighborhood but with an exuberant glass facade. It houses the Louis Armstrong Archive, and has spaces for performance and instruction (I peeked in on a couple of kids practicing the trumpet), as well as a gift shop. The main thing visitors will care about, though, is an exhibit titled “Here to Stay” that summarizes Louis Armstrong’s life and times through selected artifacts and video and audio clips. This replaces the small exhibit in the former Armstrong rec room that I describe in the original review.
“Here to Stay” includes sections with titles like “Roots,” “Tools,” “Ambassador,” and “On Film.” Each display combines some artifacts and photos and wall texts telling the relevant story. Most surprising to me was a section called “Armstrong the Artist.” I mean, obviously he was one of the greatest artists of all time. But this section refers to Louis Armstrong as a visual artist. He made collages, in both scrapbooks and on the covers of the hundreds of reel-to-reel tapes he recorded. Is collage the visual arts equivalent to jazz? Maybe. Taking bits and pieces, remixing and matching them, putting them into surprising new orders, improvisationally. It makes sense, and showed me a side to Armstrong I had no idea about before.
The exhibit also features an circular interactive table with multiple touchscreens. This gadget, designed to look like a record, that lets visitors explore in huge detail Louis Armstrong’s music, his collaborations with other artists, his travels, his life and the neighborhood, and more, all with stills, video, and audio. You could spend a long time exploring there.
The opening of the Louis Armstrong Center has provided a welcome opportunity to re-visit both the Armstrong’s house and my original review of it from seven years (!) ago.
In the years since my first visit, my love of the place has only grown. Whenever someone asks me for examples of unusual New York museums they should visit, it’s near the top of my list. And I regularly refer to it as my favorite house museum in New York. The addition of the new Louis Armstrong Center only strengthens the overall experience. I’m really glad they didn’t try to change the house itself to pack in more museum-type bits. So I’m taking advantage of this addendum to update my former rating (it was 3-4-4 before). This is absolutely one of the best museums in New York City, a wonderful tribute to a wonderful pair of people, and everyone should go.
With that, I’ll pass you off to Joe from seven years ago to give hist impressions of the house part of the Louis Armstrong House, dating from June of 2017. Having just taken the tour again, I can vouch for it being just as good this time around. You still can’t take pictures inside, though.
ORIGINAL POST: JUNE, 2017
A riddle: If Louis Armstrong were a superhero (and I’m not saying he wasn’t), what would he call his souped up vehicle for patrolling the streets of Gotham?
A: The SATCHMOBILE.
Actually the Satchmobile is the name of the official van of the Louis Armstrong House Museum.
Louis Armstrong practically invented jazz. He played all over the world, made a bajillion records, sang songs that everyone knows. And when he wasn’t doing all that, from 1943 until the day he died he and his wife Lucille lived in a modest three-story brick house in the Corona area of Queens. They entertained generations of neighborhood kids, Louis made tape recordings of himself (he was sort of a tape diarist), and generally lived far more quietly than you’d expect from a jazz superhero.
Louis Armstrong died in 1971. Lucille lived for another 12 years, until 1983. They never had kids. And the house, pretty much exactly as it was when Lucille died, passed into the hands of the city. Queens College manages the place, and they lovingly restored and opened it in 2003 as the best house museum I’ve seen so far.
You can only enter the house on guided tours, but my gods, it feels just like you’re visiting the Armstrongs. The group (nine people joined my tour on a random Saturday afternoon) goes right up the front steps, rings the musical door chime, and proceeds on their visit, which explores every room in the house, down to the breakfast nook.
The House
The management frowns on photos. I cheated once, to take a picture of Louis Armstrong’s infinitely mirrored bathroom. I wondered if Yayoi Kusama ever visited the Armstrongs. Or took this tour…
Here are some of the things I managed to resist photographing:
- Louis’s wood paneled den with its fabulous bar (there is still alcohol in his bar. Drambuie.) and fabulous reel-to-reel tape recorders.
- The Armstrongs’ bedroom with its wild silver wallpaper.
- The amazing 50s kitchen. Bright blue, enameled, curvy cabinetry, custom sub-zero fridge, everything built in. Paper towels stored in their own wall cubby. They even had a blender built into their countertop. Lucille and her kitchen designer were geniuses!
- Their white upright piano, which neither of them could play, but looked good in the living room.
- Four green ashtrays shaped like the suits from a deck of cards.
- Art from a lifetime of world travels.
- Okay, I wanted to take pictures of everything.
But I could not resist the bathroom. I apologize, Louis Armstrong House Museum folks.
The Louis Armstrong House uses sound, but unexpectedly it doesn’t play a lot of music. Rather, during the tour, the guide periodically plays bits of recordings of Armstrong talking about the house and his life. In his den, there’s a portrait of him by Tony Bennett (!), and Louis talks about that–how he signed it “Benedetto.” Letting the man speak for himself in his own home works incredibly well.
A Few Other Things
The entry to the Louis Armstrong House and its gift shop is in their former garage.
From the garage you proceed to a small exhibit area, in what used to be his rec room. Where he played poker with Dizzy Gillespie. (His poker table is on display upstairs.) I like to think of it as the Satch-cave.
Look at these stairs! And the wallpaper!
Currently there’s a display commemorating the 50th anniversary of the inescapable, somewhat saccharin (to my taste) “What a Wonderful World.” Not a hit when first released, the film “Good Morning Vietnam” rediscovered the song and set it on its path toward ubiquity. But Louis said whenever he sang it, it reminded him of Corona.
You can also see Armstrong’s bathrobe and slippers, life mask, and suitcases. And one of his trumpets. And three pages he wrote about his joy living in the neighborhood. I got the sense that even if someone had offered them, say, Andrew Carnegie’s mansion, he and Lucille would’ve stayed right where they were.
The most unexpected thing about the house is the Armstrongs bought the lot next door and made it into an expansive garden, with pine trees, a little lawn, a tiny koi pond, and a bar and barbecue. In this one place, I felt a legendary musician exerting some star power. They only built the garden in 1970, so just a year before Armstrong died. Better late than never.
I sat there for a while playing in my head what I’ll get to say when someone asks me what I was up to today. “Oh, not much. Sat in Louis Armstrong’s garden reading a magazine for a bit.”
Changes Coming
The Louis Armstrong House experience will soon change significantly. A vacant lot across the street (where they currently park the Satchmobile) is going to get a spiffy new building that will greatly increase the museum’s ability to tell Louis and Lucille’s story. I think that’s wonderful — though I wonder if the neighbors on this quiet block agree.
But even as they’re able to show off more of their collection, I sincerely hope that the house stays just exactly the way it is. It is an amazing monument to the talent, humility, and soul of one of the great figures in the history of music.
You can build museums to jazz (not saying you can succeed, but you can try). You can memorialize great concert performances in museum form. You can digitize music and tell its story through touchscreens and headphones. But nothing you can possibly do will bring you closer to Louis Armstrong than visiting his house in Corona, Queens.
Meanwhile, somebody please write a Justice League-style comic book featuring the Superheroes of Jazz battling the forces of squareness.
For Reference:
| Address | 34-56 107th Street, Flushing, Queens |
|---|---|
| Website | louisarmstronghouse.org |
| Cost | General Admission: $10, with tour |
The Super Bowl exhibit’s walk down advertising memory lane was deeply nostalgic to me. Amid Cindy Crawford selling Pepsi and a baby selling a brokerage, Apple’s 1984 ad, introducing the Mac, stands out as possibly the most revered commercial of all time. Also, why did anyone think Spuds McKenzie was a good idea?
In 1991, the institution renamed itself the Museum of Television & Radio, since even then increasing amounts of TV was distributed in ways that had nothing to do with “broadcasting.” The same year the museum moved into a fun, Philip Johnson-designed post-modernist building, which is meant to resemble an old-timey radio.
he current iteration of the Paley Museum doesn’t have a permanent collection, although there are a few adorable antique TV sets on display in the library. Instead, it hosts temporary exhibitions on timely topics. To wit, when I visited in early February, the Super Bowl. And, in a nod to Black History Month, props and costumes from the Nat Geo “Genius” miniseries about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., in a modest second floor gallery.
The curators took a sensible chronological approach, with stats on each of the LVIII games along the top (who played, final score, TV audience size). Wall texts offered details on how the Super Bowl evolved, with images and video. Artifacts livened things up: balls and jerseys, helmets, playbooks, and, climax of the exhibition, the actual Vince Lombardi Trophy. (A reproduction belonging to the New York Giants was on display the day I visited, as the actual Trophy had important duties off in Vegas.).
Then again, the town of Bethpage on Long Island, which for some reason feels qualified to weigh in on New York City museums, rated the Paley Center a “best museum and best children’s party place” in New York in 2023. So…you may want to take that into account as you evaluate whether you should visit.
When I discovered New York was getting a Museum of Broadway my first reaction was “Wait, why don’t we have one of those already?” It seems an obvious and overdue subject for a New York museum. I felt a little on the fence about it given my aversion to “museum in name only” experiential entertainment offerings. If they hand out flyers for it in Times Square, and charge $69 for “daily anytime entry,” can it be a legitimate museum? But, I figured I should take a look.
The timeline panels are text heavy and extremely detailed. Some of the early ones distinguish between plays and musicals, but later panels tend to run together, as though the curators realized they were running out of both time and space. No sane visitor has a prayer of reading all of them. Rather, I suppose, you just look for things that catch your eye, favorite shows or stars, or key moments in Broadway history. 
The timeline sequence is quite long, taking up the first two floors of the museum. Eventually visitors arrive at the present, which features a model set for “Wicked” and a couple of costumes from “Hamilton.” That makes this the most self-referential entry yet on the 
The Museum of Broadway was created with passion and love — obsession may not be too strong a word — for its subject. This is a place geared for people who love the theater, and who already know something about it. On the other hand, total novices may be bewildered or bored. Moreover, although worlds better than those cynical, experiential quasi-museums that separate tourists from their money, this is unquestionably one of New York’s most expensive museums.
Camino’s work reminds me of early 20th century jewelry by Lalique or Cartier. It draws heavily on nature, but also has a healthy dose of humor. I don’t know who would want enamel and gold earrings lovingly shaped into popcorn, but I respect that person.
The main show at Fotografiska when I visited celebrated the photography of hip hop, which is turning 50 years old this year. (Exact birthdate: August 11, 1973.) The show was organized into five zones: an origins section, three geographic sections (East Coast, West Coast, and Southern, naturally), and a “hip hop today” closer. While breezy, hagiographic wall text introduced each section, there wasn’t a lot beyond that, and I really wanted more exposition.
Many years ago I saw Punt e Mes listed on a menu at a fancy cocktail bar described along the lines of “If you know, you know.” Punt e Mes is an excellent Italian vermouth. Its name is dialect for punto e mezzo, a point and a half— meaning one part bitter, half a part sweet. This poster elegantly depicts the concept. If you didn’t know before, now you do.
, and huge windows. A hallway widens into a smaller rear gallery, passing a beautiful modern kitchen with a plethora of Pantone espresso cups. Offices and a coat room are tucked behind discreet doors.
The exhibition when I visited the Center for Italian Modern Art focused on posters made between the 1920s and the 1950s. It examined the interplay between the worlds of high art and commercial advertising, starting with the Italian futurists and cubists. It concluded with two pieces by Mimmo Rotella, who was something of an Italian anti-Warhol, taking actual posters and folding, spindling, and mutilating them into artworks that say things about capitalism and consumerism. Not generally positive things.
The show also included a poster by Lucio Fontana, who is far better known as an artist than a graphic designer. His 1935 poster for Lloyd Triestino ship lines sleekly conveys speed and modernity. And it also hints at the linear slashes in canvas that would later make him famous. (Apologies for the inadvertent selfie in my photo.)
That said, I was extremely impressed with the curation of the poster show — not to mention the beauty of the pieces they selected. Flipping through CIMA’s past catalogs left me vexed that I missed this place on my initial list of New York museums. On the brighter side, I’m happy that I know about it now. I will keep an eye on CIMA and I’m looking forward to seeing what it puts on next.
The Gilder Center is a very, very, very sexy building. It’d be easy to dismiss its biomorphic, asymmetrical forms as Flintstones architecture, or aping termites or some other social insect. And those are valid brickbats. But, seriously, look at these curves. This is the most Instagrammable new museum space New York has seen since someone last showed off a Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room.
The Gilder Center also represents AMNH looking at itself via the view of the collections, and also literally, as new windows peer out at the red brick facade of the older building.
If instead I had grown up in Brooklyn and been a fan of baseball, the number 42 would’ve had a similarly huge and cosmic significance. It was Jackie Robinson’s number when he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1947 to 1956.
