Leffert’s House has a scraggly little wormwood plant growing in its garden. Artisanal Brooklyn absinthe, anyone?
Leffert Pieterson, a Dutch farmer, obtained a tract of land in the village of Flatbush in 1687, and built himself a house there. That original Lefferts homestead was burned by the Americans just before the Battle of Brooklyn, to prevent the British from seizing and using it. However, Pieter Lefferts, in the fourth generation of a family that as some point reversed names, rebuilt a fine farmhouse for himself and his family in 1783. Continue reading “Lefferts Historic House”
I’m getting a bit of a late start in 2018. I blame the insanely cold East Coast weather. Still, here’s an obligatory year-in-review post to wrap my adventures in 2017.
Since starting this expedition last March, I’ve reviewed 144 museums. Overall averages continue to be right around, well the average. Across all the museums I’ve visited, the average education score was 3.06, entertainment 3.09, and “should you go?” rating 3.22 (on a scale from 1 to 5).
My average time spent per museum works out to about 1 hour and 3 minutes, for a cumulative total of 6 days and 6 hours and 58 minutes spent at museums I’ve reviewed this past year.
Cumulatively I’ve spent $364 on museum admissions for my 2016 reviews, or an average admission price of $2.53. I’m sure that will increase as I’ve saved some high-cost museums for the latter part of the project.
Wyckoff House Christmas Tree
By Borough
Borough
Museums Visited
Percent of Total
Average Edification
Average Entertain-ment
Go?
Brooklyn
14
61%
2.71
3.21
3.21
Bronx
15
100%
3.33
3.20
3.33
Manhattan
89
77%
3.14
3.02
3.26
Queens
19
82%
2.84
3.32
3.00
Staten Island
8
67%
2.88
2.88
3.13
At this point, Bronx museums slightly outscore those of the other boroughs. I’m surprised by that, but then again, the Bronx today quietly punches above its weight in many ways.
Fall foliage at Wave Hill, a standout among the Bronx’s surprisingly great museums
Points for Randomness
While I could focus on the greatest hits, I think it’s more fun to review the things that were most unexpected — the places I never would’ve gone except my list made me, which surprised me the most.
Truth be told, the randomest museum I’ve been to this year is one I didn’t review. While in Idaho for August’s total solar eclipse, I made a detour to the Idaho Potato Museum. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that such a place exists, giant fiberglas spud and all. But I was a little surprised that I actually liked it. I’d give it a 3 for edification, a 4 for entertainment, and a 3 for “should you go?” Assuming you ever find yourself in Blackfoot.
We’re not in Gotham anymore…
Of the museums I’ve reviewed, I would say my top five for peak randomness would be:
During 2017, I’ve had ample time to consider the concept of “museum.” I took a liberal definition of museum when I created my list. I continue to believe historic houses are indisputably museums. However, I don’t think it’s fair to judge botanical gardens by the same yardsticks as museums. And yet, I do think the historic cemeteries merit consideration as museums.
I had a conversation with my younger sister about the definition of museums, and how my thinking has evolved with the experience of visiting them all, big and small, mainstream and quirky. We kicked around various notions, starting from my initial idea that museums should both educate and entertain. I offered the idea that maybe they should “amuse” you.
From there I suggested that maybe they should be judged as places that cause you to muse on things.
And that in turn got us thinking (thanks, liberal arts education) about the Muses, the nine Greek divinities in charge of the arts. People talk about the Muses in the sense of having one, or of the Muse being upon them when they have a burst of creativity.
So perhaps museums shouldn’t just educate and entertain or amuse or make you think. Additionally, they should inspire. Something about that feels very right to me. I think of the people I’ve seen sketching at the Met, or those taking the Grolier Club’s life drawing and drinking class. Or myself, walking through say the Van Cortlandt House dutifully taking notes and seeking inspiration to frame a story about the place.
I briefly considered whether I should retroactively rate the places I’ve visited in terms of their inspiration levels. Fortunately, I have realized that even though it wasn’t an explicit criterion, inspiration correlates very strongly with how much I recommend visiting a museum.
The Shape of Museums to Come
It’s hard to believe I fewer then 50 museums to go in my Pokemon-esque effort to catch ‘em all. Barring something unforeseen, I should finish my last review just about a year from starting the project. I’ve deliberately left some of the biggest and most famous museums for late in this project — I have yet to write about MoMA or the American Museum of Natural History, and I’m looking forward to the challenge of those.
The Met: Still To Come
If there’s one category of museum I’ve not done justice to thus far, it’s children’s museums. I worry that I’ll seem a little creepy if I go to a children’s museum sans kid. And additionally I want a young person’s perspective to inform my own reactions to how well the childrens’ museums fulfill their mandates. So I will have to borrow or rent some kids in the next few weeks to rectify that.
Anyway, happy new year, thanks for reading, and here’s to another two score and five museum reviews before I’m done.
When I started this project I decided I’d rate museums based on standards of edification and entertainment. That is, how much I felt educated or improved by a place, and how fun the place was. I then added a third rating based on how much I think people should visit (or not).
But in our modern social, digital age, I’ve arguably missed a vital yardstick in the assessment of museum quality: how share-able an institution makes the experience.
Donald Judd’s dining table looks exactly like Donald Judd designed a dining table.
Utterly simple wood with chairs that seamlessly, create a box when its 14 chairs were pushed in. It reminded me of one of those wooden cube puzzles where you remove one piece and the whole thing falls apart— symmetric perfection broken.
And it is the exact size of the windows in the huge, open, “eating” level of the building.
In 1968 the artist Donald Judd bought a building in then-dilapidated SoHo. Five stories high, the building was used for light industry — small factories that my guide did not call “sweatshops” but that probably were. Indeed, to this day some of the floors retain holes that show where an apparel manufacturer bolted down sewing machines.
Judd, his wife Julie Finch, and their newborn son Flavin moved into the place, and Judd proceeded to remake the four upstairs floors to his own design. Judd changed floors and ceilings, installed fittings and fixtures, and designed both art and furniture specifically for the place. He also installed art from his friends and fellow SoHo Bohemians. He made the place their home, but he also made their home a work of art. Continue reading “Judd Foundation”
The giant “Azel F. Merrell” oyster sloop flag hanging in the museum. The city’s oystering history is one of my favorite parts of the New York story.
Most historic buildings in New York are a scattershot, here-and-there thing, involving much travel through the contemporary city to get from one to the next. In terms of quantity in proximity it is impossible to beat Staten Island’s Historic Richmond Town, which boasts over 23 buildings from the 1600s to the 1800s, mostly within walking distance and periodically open to the public. Continue reading “Historic Richmond Town”
Wyckoff family members lived in the Wyckoff House right through the start of the 1900s. 250 years of family history in a single domicile boggles my mind.
Before starting my project, I never realized how many historic houses exist in modern New York. Some surprisingly old. Manhattan’s oldest, the Morris-Jumel Mansion, dates from the 1760s. The Van Cortlandt House in the Bronx was built in 1748. Bowne House in Queens dates to the 1660s. But in any city, there can be only one oldest house. In New York that is the Wyckoff House, located in the prosaically named Flatlands, a nondescript part of Brooklyn far from any subway line.
And so, on the first snowy day of the year, I made my trek, over the river and through the woods, half-metaphorically and half-literally, to the Wyckoffs’ ancestral home. Continue reading “Wyckoff House Museum”
My favorite fun fact from the tour is that the Lower East Side got the moniker “Klein Deutschland” before there even was a unified “Deutschland.”
There are certain combinations of places and architecture that just go together. Paris+garret; Newport+mansion; San Francisco+Victorian ; Brooklyn+brownstone. And “Lower East Side+tenement.” It’s almost redundant to call a place the “Lower East Side Tenement Museum.” But New York has one of those, and redundant or not, it is a fantastic, unforgettable recreation of a slice of life in this city.
How the Other Half Lived
The word “tenement” originally referred to any multiple dwelling building, what we’d call an “apartment” today. Very quickly, however, “tenement” came to mean a very particular type of multiple dwelling building. One aimed at the working class and recent immigrants, crammed with people and with very limited light, ventilation, and amenities.
A vertical tour brings you up close to the engineering of an old-school cathedral. The building is buttressed to support the weight of an enormous tower that was never built.
Above the ceiling…
To balance that buttressing, there’s literally tons of lead above the ceiling vaults, pushing down and out as the buttresses push in.
Although I have rarely attended a service there, the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine has figured large in my life in New York City.
Shortly after I arrived as a freshman at Columbia, I attended an event at the Cathedral. The Dalai Lama spoke, as did the daughter of Desmond Tutu. I vividly remember it was right around Rosh Hashanah, and a group of monks offered a chant in honor of the High Holy Days. Tibetan Buddhist monks singing in honor of the Jewish new year in the largest Christian cathedral in the world. To this day, that stands as one of my quintessential New York experiences. Continue reading “Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine”
The library at King Manor houses beautiful, custom, glass-doored bookshelves and a library of 3,500 books.
I like that the museum put a statue of Rufus King there. I imagine it was his favorite room in the house.
Of all the historic houses in New York this is the only Manor. As in “Stately Wayne…” We have multiple “Houses” of course, a “Grange,” a “Birthplace,” and a “Mansion” or two. A “Homestead.” And now, a Manor.
Long Live the King
I now regret that I used “The King of Queens” in my review of Kingsland Homestead. Sea captain Joseph King was probably a fine guy, but Rufus King was far more deserving of the sobriquet.
Rufus King, owner of King Manor, served as a Major in the Continental Army, a friend to Alexander Hamilton, and a staunch abolitionist before that was fashionable. King contributed to the framing of the Constitution and signed it as a delegate from Massachusetts, his home state.
Rufus King
Washington wanted him in the Cabinet, but King demurred, and instead served in London as the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James. He reportedly got on well with King George III.
On his return to the States, family connections along with Hamilton persuaded him to move his household from Boston to bigger, badder New York City.
King decided that he wanted a country farm as well as a place in town, and that’s how he came to discover his house in Jamaica. He bought King Manor in 1803. King added substantially to the house he purchased, taking an asymmetrical Dutch farmhouse and making it at least faux-symmetrical, on trend with the then-current Federal style.
What with the renovations and expansion King’s family didn’t move in until 1806 or so. Hamilton was of course dead by then, so sadly never set foot in King Manor. However, King and Hamilton were so close that A.Ham was godfather to King’s eldest son.
The King family was also close with Archibald Gracie. Two King sons married two Gracie daughters. Moreover, for a short time, King held a mortgage on Gracie Mansion.
Mind Your Manors
I was the sole visitor on a random weekday afternoon. The volunteer minding the place was terrific, though, giving me a thorough and thoroughly interesting tour.
The tour takes you to the kitchen, decked out with a beautiful cast iron stove that dates from after Rufus’s day (his household cooked on an open hearth, which the stove tidily fills). Visitors also see the parlor, King’s library, and the dining room, which is complete with a trendy curved wall.
That graceful curved wall is just internal. It wouldn’t do to have a semicircular exterior wall breaking the house’s symmetry. There are two closets tucked into the odd spaces between the interior and exterior walls
King Manor doesn’t have much in the way of genuine King furnishings. It’s got some reproduction portraits. I wish it were more furnished than it is–even if the furniture is ersatz, it helps convey a sense of what life was like. It does have a genuinely old piano, and hosts concerts.
King Manor stayed in the King family until 1896, when Cornelia King, one of Rufus’s granddaughters, died. Soon thereafter the village of Jamaica bought the house and 11 acres of land to create King Park, preserving the building in its original location — a relative rarity in New York City.
Absent original fixtures and furnishings, the kitchen, parlor, and hall are given over to displays geared toward the school kids who constitute a massive proportion of visitors. Wall texts discuss Rufus King and his role in drafting the Constitution — and his opposition to the way that document basically punted on slavery, with the abolitionists among the Framers just sort of hoping it would go away on its own. One of King’s sons, John Alsop King, continued his father’s anti-slavery fight after his father died in 1827.
Long Lived the King
Another wall display discusses life in Jamaica when it was an independent village a long way from the towns of Brooklyn and Manhattan. My guide pointed out that Mr. and Mrs. King (and son John King) are buried in the churchyard of the Grace Episcopal Church just a few blocks away, so after departing King Manor I went to pay my respects.
Should you Visit the King Manor Museum?
King Manor fulfills its mandate really well. While I’m not saying “get thee to Jamaica!” if you like historic houses or founding fathers at all then you should unquestionably visit King Manor. It’s a beautiful old house, and the home of a person who turns out to be more interesting than I first expected.
My guide pointed out that King ran for president in 1816. Unsuccessfully, of course (we got Monroe instead). But not just unsuccessfully: King won only 34 electoral votes to Monroe’s 183, and put the final nail in the coffin of the Federalist party. My guide quizzed me: “In the history of the United States, two people from Jamaica have run for president. One was Rufus King. Do you know the other?” I thought a moment before suggesting, “The current president.” Yep.
His failure as a presidential candidate notwithstanding, King found many ways to serve his country during a time when his country was just being invented.
On the topic of slavery, Rufus King was ahead of his time. You can’t say that about all of his cohort. A visit to his home will acquaint you with someone who might be a B-list Founding Father, but who deserves better treatment from history, writers of hit Broadway musicals, and his adopted city.
For Reference:
Address
King Park, 153rd Street and Jamaica Avenue, Jamaica, Queens
This case of Tibetan figurines. The story is a spoiler, so I tell it in the review below.
Oh, this one hurts me a little. I really, really wanted the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art to be a diamond of enlightenment in the heart of Staten Island. An amazing, secret Shangri-La in the midst of Shao-Lin. I really did.
But it’s not to be.
This Way to Shangri-La?
Near the geographic heart of Staten Island, high on a hill, there’s a lighthouse. Climb the road up that hillside. Pass the lighthouse and enter a well-to-do neighborhood of big houses. Eventually, you will reach a large stone wall, festooned on one end with distinctive Tibetan prayer flags. Stairs lead you down to a library, exhibit hall, and a small, steep, garden. Perched on the hill like a miniature Potala Palace, you’ve found the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan ArtContinue reading “Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art”
Leffert Pieterson, a Dutch farmer, obtained a tract of land in the village of Flatbush in 1687, and built himself a house there. That original Lefferts homestead was burned by the Americans just before the Battle of Brooklyn, to prevent the British from seizing and using it. However, Pieter Lefferts, in the fourth generation of a family that as some point reversed names, rebuilt a fine farmhouse for himself and his family in 1783. Continue reading “Lefferts Historic House”
King decided that he wanted a country farm as well as a place in town, and that’s how he came to discover his house in Jamaica. He bought King Manor in 1803. King added substantially to the house he purchased, taking an asymmetrical Dutch farmhouse and making it at least faux-symmetrical, on trend with the then-current Federal style.
The tour takes you to the kitchen, decked out with a beautiful cast iron stove that dates from after Rufus’s day (his household cooked on an open hearth, which the stove tidily fills). Visitors also see the parlor, King’s library, and the dining room, which is complete with a trendy curved wall.
