Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation

Edification value 4/5
Entertainment value 4/5
Should you go? 4/5
Time spent 126 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned I am fascinated by Asante goldweights, a thing that I didn’t know existed. In the traditional Asante culture of Ghana, when a man came of age he received a set of these bronze weights, for weighing gold dust (used as currency). They let you verify you’re getting the right amount of gold.

The Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation, New York
Asante Goldweights

They are beautiful little figures, each representing a different weight, as well as an Asante proverb or aphorism. They remind me of Japanese netsuke, another small men’s accessory that could be purely functional, but how nice that they are beautiful, too.

Chaim Gross was apparently as fascinated by them I am, given the multitude of them he collected and displayed in a mirrored case in his dining room.

Chaim Gross was a sculptor active in New York from the 1920s until his death in 1991. In 1963, well after he was a well-known artist, he and his wife Renee purchased a building on La Guardia Place in Greenwich Village to use as both home and studio. In 2005, after Renee passed away, the Gross Foundation considered what to do with the place, and ultimately decided to restore and open it to the public.

The Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation, New York
The Most Understated Museum in New York?

And yet, this place is supremely under the radar. I discovered its existence while compiling my master museum database. But I’ve walked by its building numerous times, and I never once thought it might be a publicly accessible museum, much less such an interesting one. It may be the most stealthy museum in New York City — or the second, after the New York Earth Room.

Without hesitation, you should definitely seek it out. It’s a remarkable tribute to an artist and his family.

The Foundation is only open for tours, taking reservations via its website. It’s the kind of small organization where my tour guide was Sasha Davis, the Executive Director of the Foundation itself. She was fantastic, a wealth of knowledge of, and warmth for, the Grosses, their art, and their world. She was also incredibly nice about delaying the start of our tour for a friend who was running late.

The Ground Floor

The parallels between the Gross Foundation and the Judd Foundation are deep — both studio/museum spaces open for visits. But where Donald Judd was a consummate minimalist, Gross was a masterful maximalist. His home is sensorily overwhelming, literally every square inch of wall and table space covered in art.

That maximalism begins with the foyer. The entryway at the Gross Foundation is filled with photographs of Chaim, his family, their circle of friends. You know, like Marilyn Monroe, Allan Ginsburg, just the usual crew. But I found this one particularly compelling.

The Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation, New York
All the Living American Artists in the Met, in the Met, 1983

It is, Sasha the Executive Director said, a picture of all the living American artists with work in the collection of the Met as of 1983. Taken at the Temple of Dendur. Warhol, Chaim Gross himself, Warhol, and Louise Nevelson are relatively easy to identify. But I’m apparently mortifyingly bad at artist spotting. Jasper Johns has to be in there.  Ditto Ryman, Nauman, Marden.  Judd, Frankenthaler, Martin. Georgia O’Keeffe would’ve been alive when this photo was taken, and surely the Met owned some of her work by the early 1980s, but she’s not there. So, mysteries abound. So far Googling has not turned up any info about the picture. I feel like there’s an essay here!The Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation, New York

The Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation, New York
Tools of the Trade

Past the entryway, the ground floor consists of a galley showcasing Chaim Gross’s work, as well as his airy, light-filled studio. That space, downstairs from the galley, is replete with his tools and several pieces he was working on when he died. It also a number of uncarved blocks of the now-rare tropical hardwoods Gross favored for sculpting. Sasha related that sometimes when other sculptors come to visit they eye those blocks covetously. The overall studio and gallery create a fascinating time capsule to the man and his art.

A Touching Moment

Sasha explained that Gross felt strongly that sculpture needs to be experienced haptically— that is, by touch — to really understand it. The Foundation has struggled a bit to figure out how to honor that sentiment, and just opened a temporary exhibit on its second floor of select pieces of Gross’s work that visitors can, yes, touch.

The Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation, New York
Hands-On Experience

It is incredibly weird to put your hands on a piece of art in a museum setting. Transgressive.  Like you’re violating a taboo, even when it’s totally sanctioned by the rules. A friend needed to wash her hands before she could do it. I had to make two tries and each time I pulled back before finally taking the tactile plunge. And it’s so interesting. I guess I agree with Gross. You can look at works from all angles and think you know them, but the sense of touch opens your eyes — pardon the metaphor! — to a sculpture’s true nature.

The woods Gross worked with are particularly touchable. Ebony, lignum vitae, others, each have their particular warmth, density, grain, and smoothness. There’s also a piece in alabaster in the tactile exhibit, but that stuff is sensitive to skin oil, you have to wear a glove to touch it. It’s still worth it!

The Living Rooms

The Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation, New YorkThe tour then ascends to the third and final public floor, which preserves the Grosses’ living and dining rooms, and the art therein. It’s an astonishing surfeit of things to see. Given Gross’s circle of friends and colleagues, it’s unsurprising that the collection includes pieces by Milton Avery, Willem de Kooning, Marsden Hartley, and many others.  The furniture is an interesting, eclectic mix as well, some midcentury some older. And then there’s the African art, which clearly was a major passion of Gross’s.

The tour touched on a broad swath of the collection; I think Sasha could probably speak to every single piece, though there’s no way we would’ve had time for that. I was impressed by the depth we went into on the African art — and by how clearly it influenced some of Gross’s own sculpture.

The Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation, New York

You Should Visit the Gross Foundation!

I have to confess that the name Chaim Gross meant little to me when I first added this place to my museum list. One of the reasons I saved it for near the end was I didn’t know just what to expect.  (Also, the studio was closed for renovation over the winter.) Upon visiting I realize I’ve certainly seen his work before, but I’ve never found it compelling enough to learn about.The Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation, New York

Much like my Noguchi Museum visit, long, long ago on this project, the Gross Foundation changed my thinking about his work, and gave me a far deeper appreciation for what he did and how he did it. He seems like a fascinating guy, with a great family. The only thing the tour doesn’t provide is a sense of Gross’s motivation for his art — what influenced him and why he created what he did remains enigmatic. Sasha Davis says he didn’t really say or write much about that aspect of himself. Even though he taught many artists, he always focused on technique, not so much on inspiration.

The Gross foundation is a tremendously good house museum, all the better for being so unjustly unknown. If you like the art and artists of mid-century New York, or any kind of sculpture, you really have to go. Visiting was a glimpse into a life and a body of work that I wish I’d known about sooner.

The Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation, New York
Chaim Gross, Self Portrait

Gross’s maximalist art collection and great eye ensure that it is extremely unlikely to get old. This was my first visit to the Gross Foundation, but I’m sure it won’t be my last one.

For Reference:

Address 526 Laguardia Place, Manhattan (near Bleecker Street)
Website rcgrossfoundation.org
Cost  General Admission:  $15.  Advance tour reservations required.
Other Relevant Links

 

Conference House

 

Edification value  
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  2/5
Time spent 65 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned As is very often the case with historic houses, I was enamored of the Conference House kitchen, which includes the original open hearth stove. I wouldn’t want to have to cook there, especially not in the summer. But it’s neat to look at.

Conference House, Staten Island

Far, far away, on the southern shore of Staten Island, is an old farmhouse.  And I mean, pretty darn old.  The Billopp House, better known as Conference House, dates to around 1675.  Wyckoff House in Brooklyn and Bowne House in Queens are older. And there are four houses in Staten Island that are older, too.  I suppose Staten Islanders don’t tear stuff down as aggressively as they do in other boroughs.

Conference House, Staten Island

Anyway, Billopp House survives not through an accident of fate or because the Billopps themselves did anything particularly great or notorious.  Rather, it survives because of a single afternoon there in 1776. Continue reading “Conference House”

Roosevelt House

 

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  3/5
Time spent 88 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned
Roosevelt House, Hunter College
Happy Days Are Here Again Set

This 1934 pitcher and mug set featuring caricatures of FDR and other Democrats, created by the Stangl Pottery Company following the repeal of prohibition. Cheers!Roosevelt House, Hunter College

Roosevelt House on East 65th Street is Hunter College’s public policy institute.  Lots of schools name places after people who gave them money or famous alums (or both!) so you might just think, “Oh the Roosevelts bought naming rights back in the day.”  Or, I mean, it’s Roosevelt, why not name something policy-related after any or all of them?  But all those hypotheses are wrong!

Roosevelt House, Hunter CollegeFor nearly a quarter of a century FDR and Eleanor lived there as their place in New York City.  Actually it’s two houses designed to look like one from the outside. Franklin and Eleanor lived to the right, while FDR’s mom lived to the left.  While few historic furnishings remain, the house’s internal fabric is similar enough that you can get a sense of the space the Roosevelts occupied. And it’s open for public tours on Saturdays.  

For some reason, Hunter keeps this quiet. I stumbled on to the place late; it was not on my initial list of museums.  I think this is the most under-the-radar historic house museum in Manhattan.  And I’ve been to all of them.  At least, I think I have.

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in New York City

When Franklin and Eleanor married in 1905, Sara Delano Roosevelt, FDR’s mom, gave them a drawing of a townhouse as a wedding gift.  It took a while to deliver on the real-world equivalent, and it’s unclear whether she specified she’d be their extremely close neighbor.  But still, pretty neat wedding present.

The Roosevelts moved into the Charles Platt-designed house in 1908.  They already had Anna and James, and had a further three surviving children while living there.  The house feels big by New York standards, though small by modern McMansion ones.  And maybe not so big for a family of 7 plus assorted staff.

Each of the paired houses featured a teensy elevator, installed mainly for staff use initially. They turned out to be extremely important once FDR contracted polio in 1921.  His wheelchair, designed to be as small and discreet as possible, could fit.

Roosevelt House, Hunter College

The Roosevelts’ library is still a library today, and contains an array of interesting Rooseveltiana, including a complete set of travel guides published by a Works Progress Administration program to provide work for unemployed writers.  Today, I guess, the government would just give ’em a blog.

Roosevelt House, Hunter College
WPA Guides

Among other historic events, the Roosevelts were living in the house when FDR won the presidency in 1932.  FDR’s first radio address to the nation (also recorded for newsreel distribution by Fox Movietone News, which I can’t help but find ironic) was broadcast from the drawing room.

The House and Hunter

Roosevelt House, Hunter College
Sara over the fireplace, flanked by FDR and Eleanor

Franklin and Eleanor were living in the White House when Sara Delano Roosevelt died in 1941. By that point, it seemed unlikely that their path would take them back to NYC, and so they decided to put the house/houses on the market.  Hunter approached the family with an offer, and, generously, the Roosevelts both cut their asking price and donated some money to the school.  In exchange, the house was named the “Sara Delano Roosevelt Memorial House for Religious and Racial Tolerance.”

Hunter used the house primarily as a student center,  filling a vital need to build community in what was then an all-girl school that specialized in training teachers.

As a part of a not-very-wealthy academic institution, the house was hard used and ill repaired.  Eventually in the 1990s the school had to close it; conditions inside were becoming downright dangerous.

Fortunately, Hunter admins and donors realized the importance of the house to the college, the city, and the country. The school raised nearly $20 million for a lengthy rehab.  The restoration was bad in terms of the historicity of the place, permanently merging the two houses into a single space.  But it was good in the sense that we might otherwise have lost the house entirely. As happened with Teddy Roosevelt’s torn down then rebuilt birthplace.

Roosevelt House, Hunter College
Sara Roosevelt’s Former Bedroom, now Seminar Room.

Should You Visit Roosevelt House?

Roosevelt House, Hunter CollegeToday if anyone thinks of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s residence at all, they likely think of Hyde Park, the estate north of New York that houses FDR’s presidential library.  That’s absolutely worth a visit; Roosevelt House in Manhattan pales by comparison.

But Hunter’s public policy institute was the Roosevelts’ city home as they were growing their family; as Franklin suffered and recovered from polio; and as FDR and Eleanor plotted out the beginnings of a political career that would lead to arguably America’s greatest presidency.

So what if they don’t have the sofas or the lamps or the bric-a-brac.  They have the place, and places matter.  The guided tour was terrific, too.  Rachel, a doctoral student when not guiding people around Roosevelt House,  told the story with wit, warmth, and intellect, augmented by photos and videos in the various rooms to help bring the Roosevelts back to life.

If you’re at all interested in 20th century American history, presidential lives and times, or how wealthy New Yorkers lived in the early 1900s, Roosevelt House is well worth a visit.

For Reference:

Address  47-49 East 65th Street, Manhattan
Website  roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu
Cost  General Admission:  $10 suggested donation

 

Weeksville Heritage Center

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  2/5
Should you go?  3/5
Time spent 89 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned  I have a fascination with kitchens. I loved the 1930s kitchen in the Williams House. Full of obsolete appliances and a pantry stocked with canned good brands that no longer exist.

In 1838, about a decade after New York State abolished slavery, James Weeks bought some land in central Brooklyn with the aim of creating a community of free, landowning, African Americans.

Weeksville Heritage Center

Weeksville thrived for about a century, before changing times and demographics conspired to end it as a distinct neighborhood. While local people never quite forgot Weeksville, the larger city did, as Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant absorbed and paved over it. Continue reading “Weeksville Heritage Center”

Queens County Farm Museum

Edification value  2/5
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  3/5
Time spent 32 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned In the dormant children’s garden, the sign for Egyptian walking onions, which I learned are a type of perennial onion.

Queens County Farm Museum
Walk Like An…Nevermind

Queens County Farm MuseumThis is a necessarily incomplete review.  Visiting a “farm museum” in midwinter is not a recipe for seeing the place at its best, busiest, or most inviting.  Indeed, I’m not sure why the Queens County Farm Museum doesn’t just shut down from December til March.  But it was open and it’s on my list. So I gathered an intrepid friend and we trooped out to the far eastern fringes of Queens, where New York City blurs into Nassau County, to get the lay of the land.

I imagine this place exists mainly so that city kids can learn that chickens come in forms other than McNuggets and wool doesn’t start out life as a sweater.  And I bet most visitors arrive on school buses.

The Farm in Winter

Queens County Farm MuseumI’m sure that in more clement seasons the 40+ acres of grounds are verdant and bucolic.  This time of year, not so much.

Queens County Farm Museum
Alpaca Truths

On a winter weekday, the only things to see are the livestock and some dormant farm equipment.  A couple of alpacas, some goats, a few sheep, a couple of cows, and a whole flock of laying hens.  Indeed on that last point, you can buy farm fresh eggs at the gift shop when it’s not winter (hens apparently don’t do much laying in cold months).  You can also get farm-fresh honey and alpaca yarn at the gift shop.

Queens County Farm Museum
Urban Chickens

As I was flying the coop a touring school group came crowding around to look at the birds.  One kid asked if he could pet them, the answer to which was a resounding “no!”  Chickens like to peck.  And as I got further away I thought I heard a kid say “KFC! KFC!” However, I was almost out of earshot.  It might have been “I can’t see!  I can’t see!”

Queens County Farm Museum

A Little History

The origins of today’s farm museum extend all the way back to an actual farm founded in 1697, though there aren’t any physical traces from that era.  The grounds do still have an historic house belonging to the Adriance family, dating to just before the American Revolution.

Queens County Farm Museum

The Adriances kept the place in their family for about a century, before it passed quickly through a succession of other farming families, and from there to the Creedmoor State Hospital, which owned and operated it from 1926 through the 1970s.

Creedmoor is a nearby psychiatric hospital associated with this and another New York museum, the Living Museum (review coming very soon).  Creedmoor used the farm for rehabilitation and to grow food for patients, and flowers and ornamental plants to brighten its campus.

As Creedmoor’s population shrank, it had less need of its own farm, and so the place spun off into a museum in 1975.

Should You Visit the Farm?

The Queens County Farm Museum website claims that its receives 500,000 visitors annually, making it “the highest attended cultural institution in Queens County.”  I feel skeptical about the superlative given that the borough is home to New York’s great contemporary bastion of tragedy (and occasional farce), Citifield.  But it likely is the highest attendance of a Queens County museum.

Regardless of the myriads of others who go, should you?

Certainly you shouldn’t visit the farm in the dead of February.  Most of the buildings are shut down, there’s no public greenhouses like the New York and Brooklyn Botanic Gardens or Wave Hill have, and the various zoos offer more convenient places to encounter a goat if you feel inclined to do that.

Queens County Farm Museum
For de-goating yourself

I felt disappointed in the place from a learning perspective; I wanted more in the way of explanatory texts. Even with fields fallow, the place could explain what farms do during the winter. But perhaps they have an awesome brochure, or do a great guides/docents/explainers program in warmer seasons.  I will have to come back.

The largest downside to the Queens County Farm Museum is its location. For anyone coming from more central parts of the city it’s decidedly inconvenient.  You have to really want to go (and ideally have a car).

Additionally, I didn’t see much attraction for grown-ups. Buying farmstand stuff grown right there would be neat, but New York these days is blessed with an abundance of farmers markets offering terrific produce.  But I reckon the Queens County Farm Museum offers a fascinating and eye-opening experience for city kids.  And New York has nothing else quite like it.

Queens County Farm Museum

For Reference:

Address 73-50 Little Neck Parkway, Floral Park, Queens
Website queensfarm.org
Cost  General Admission:  Free
Other Relevant Links

 

Lefferts Historic House

 

Edification value  2/5
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  2/5
Time spent 29 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned
Lefferts Historic House
Wormwood!

Leffert’s House has a scraggly little wormwood plant growing in its garden.  Artisanal Brooklyn absinthe, anyone?

 

Lefferts Historic HouseLeffert 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”

Historic Richmond Town

 

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  4/5
Should you go?  3/5
Time spent 130 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned 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.

Historic Richmond Town, Staten Island

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 House Museum

 

Edification value 3/5
Entertainment value 3/5
Should you go?  
Time spent 61 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned 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.

Wyckoff House, Canarsie, Brooklyn

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”

King Manor Museum

 

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  3/5
Time spent 65 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned The library at King Manor houses beautiful, custom, glass-doored bookshelves and a library of 3,500 books.

King Manor Museum, Jamaica Queens

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.

King Manor Museum

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.

King Manor Museum, Jamaica Queens
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 Manor Museum, Jamaica QueensKing 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.

King Manor MuseumThe 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.King Manor Museum, Jamaica Queens

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.

King Manor Museum, Jamaica Queens

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.

Grace Episcopal Church graveyard in Jamaica Queens
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.

King Manor Museum, Jamaica Queens

For Reference:

Address King Park, 153rd Street and Jamaica Avenue, Jamaica, Queens
Website kingmanor.org
Cost  General Admission:  $5, suggested donation

 

Wave Hill

Edification value  
Entertainment value  
Should you go?  
Time spent 114 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Rather than the grounds or the view I decided to limit myself to the “Call and Response” exhibit.  Steven Millar’s “Many-Eyed Object,” 2017, is wood and glass, constructed and organic, and all about changing vistas and views.  

Wave Hill, Riverdale, the Bronx
Steven Millar, “Many-Eyed Object,” 2017

In that, it neatly summarizes Wave Hill as a whole.

For the first time since I started this project, I feel the need for absolution.

“Forgive me, City, for I have sinned.”

“My son, how long has it been since your last confession?”

“Well, Bloomberg was in office, so it’s been a while…”

“What did you do?”

“It’s not a sin of commission, but a sin of omission.  I confess that it has been twenty-three years since I last paid a visit to Wave Hill.”

What the Heck is Wave Hill?

Wave Hill, Riverdale, the Bronx

Wave Hill is difficult to describe.  

I mean, partly it’s easy:

Two fancy old mansions and associated outbuildings and landscaping across 28 acres of surrounding land, on a bluff in Riverdale in the Bronx, overlooking the Hudson and the majestic cliffs of the Palisades in New Jersey, now used as a venue for contemporary art.

So it’s a hybrid art museum, botanic garden, and historic home.  Cut and dried.

Continue reading “Wave Hill”