Lewis Latimer House

Edification value  4/5
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  4/5
Time spent 58 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Latimer’s work on the lightbulb made him (slightly) famous, but he patented many other things. He invented a method of cooling a room by dampening fabric hung in a window.  And a rack that could safely lock your hat, coat, or umbrella, for use at offices or restaurants. And finally, a better train toilet, details of which I’m probably happier not to know.

Lewis Latimer, the son of escaped slaves, helped patent the telephone, refined the design of the light bulb, and ended up a Grand Old Man of the General Electric Company.  He also painted and wrote poetry.

He’s sort of a footnote to history — but a good footnote, and a meaningful one, not one of those ones you just skim over.  It’s therefore fantastic that his home in Flushing today serves as a museum to his memory.

Lewis Latimer House

Continue reading “Lewis Latimer House”

Bowne House

Edification value 3/5 
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  2/5
Time spent 61 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Bowne House, Flushing, QueensWe didn’t even discuss it on the tour but this vintage washing machine (definitely later than 1661) evoked for me all the artifacts from hundreds of years of Bowne family life in this house– the stories they could tell!

Imagine the year 1661.  Charles II was crowned King of England.  Sweden and Russia wrapped up a war.  The Netherlands ceded the territory of New Holland to Portugal (nowadays it’s a chunk of Brazil).  A kid named Isaac Newton enrolled at Cambridge.  And Englishman John Bowne and his wife Hannah settled in a small farmhouse in the Dutch village of Vlissingen, in the hinterlands of New Amsterdam.

Bowne House, Flushing, Queens

356 years later, that modest house (with several additions and alterations) still stands on its original plot of land. Today we call Vlissingen the neighborhood of Flushing in the borough of Queens. Continue reading “Bowne House”

Queens College Art Center

Edification value  2/5
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  
Time spent 19 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Milanese designer Silvia Giovanardi’s samurai dress. Her work incorporates natural fibers and a lot of Japanese influence.  I don’t recall ever seeing a fashion riff on samurai armor before!

Fabric of Cultures at Queens College Art Center
Silvia Giovanardi, Samurai Dress
Library at Queens College, Flushing
Brutal in its efforts not to be Brutalist

The Queens College Art Center occupies a glassed-in hallway on the sixth floor of the fairly depressing, blocky library building on Queens College’s campus in the far reaches of Flushing.  This building doesn’t want to be Brutalist and standoffish, but its efforts to be welcoming are so forced and artificial that it ultimately feels even less welcoming than if the architects hadn’t tried in the first place.

The guard at the front desk may not exactly know that the library even houses an Art Center on its sixth floor. But based on my experience, if you’re nice about it and confident about where you’re going he will happily wave you on into the library, no need to show an ID or sign a guest register or anything. Continue reading “Queens College Art Center”

Godwin-Ternbach Museum

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  3/5
Time spent 23 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned This picture book of famous men who loved cats.  Beautifully illustrated and funny and reminded me how much I don’t want to be one of those single guys with cats.  

Cat Book at Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College
Sam Kalda, “Of Cats and Men,” 2017

The entry on William S. Burroughs begins, “In a gentlemen’s club such as this, there are bound to be a few scandals.”

Klapper Hall, Queens College, FlushingQueens College started collecting art in the 1950s, and today holds a collection that, according to their website, encompasses over 5,000 objects from across history.  That makes the Queens College art collection more comprehensive than that of the Queens Museum, and the most encyclopedic in the borough.

As that collection grew, the college eventually decided to create a venue to curate and display it. Founded in 1981, the museum takes its name from its founders: art historian Frances Godwin and art restorer Joseph Ternbach. The Godwin-Ternbach Museum today consists of a medium sized space in the very institutional-looking Klapper Hall.  The museum has a flexible, open floorplan, with super high ceilings and a small mezzanine level overlooking it on three sides.  With its pretty parquet floor, the space reminded me oddly of a basketball court for art. Continue reading “Godwin-Ternbach Museum”

New York Hall of Science

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  4/5
Should you go?  3/5
Time spent 135 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned The Hall of Science boats a small outdoor rocket garden, with a Gemini Titan 2, a Mercury-Atlas D, and a reproduction Saturn V engine.  

Mercury Atlas D Rocket, New York Hall of Science
Fly me to the moon…or at least orbit

Very big science, and a reminder that we sent the first astronauts to space strapped to the top of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

New York Hall of ScienceFlushing Meadows Corona Park is strewn with relics from New York’s two great World’s Fairs, in 1939 and 1964.  While the Queens Museum is the last building still around from 1939, the nearby New York Hall of Science is a notable survivor from 1964. Today, the Hall of Science is sort of a patchwork of old-school science museum and hip, modern, interactive experience.  To wit, it kinda wants to be called “Ny-Sci,” though I don’t want to call it that.  Its home is a similar patchwork–at times I couldn’t figure out what parts of it are midcentury versus later additions.  

World's Fair at New York Hall of Science, Queens
1964 World’s Fair Display

Continue reading “New York Hall of Science”

Queens Museum

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  4/5
Should you go?  4/5
Time spent 144 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned The Queens Museum could install the Mona Lisa on loan from the Louvre and the Panorama of the City of New York would still be the best thing at the Queens Museum.

Queens MuseumEach of New York’s outer boroughs has a showpiece, namesake museum.  They range from the huge and ambitious Brooklyn Museum to the quirkier, but still ambitious, Bronx Museum of the Arts.  The Queens Museum, in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, has something unique in all of New York City’s museums making a visit mandatory for anyone who loves New York City.

I’ll get to that in a moment; first some history. Continue reading “Queens Museum”

Museum of the Moving Image

Edification value  4/5
Entertainment value  
Should you go?  4/5
Time spent 147 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned The Jim Henson exhibit features an immense screen-of-screens which shows, continually, every episode of the Muppet Show.

Muppet Exhibit, Museum of the Moving Image, Queens
Every Muppet Show Ever

Each sub-screen is big enough that you can see what is going on individually and in patterns…it converts nostalgia TV into video art. Look, there’s Carol Channing! Look, it’s a very young Steve Martin! I’m not sure anyone after Gen X will get anything out of it, but it mesmerized me.

Museum of the Moving Image, QueensIn reviewing the Bayside Historical Society I noted the brief historical moment when the eastern reaches of Queens might’ve become Hollywood. In our universe, the film industry eventually centered itself in balmy Los Angeles. However, a chunk of it did remain in Queens. The Kaufman Astoria Studios is our answer to the great factories of movie magic out west. And the studio lot is also home to the Museum of the Moving Image.

Museum of the Moving Image, QueensLocated in a fairly unprepossessing building, the museum’s interior isn’t what I expected — very contemporary with a small back garden behind its cafe, airy, with a great staircase that leads up to an open screening area where you can take a break and watch…well, whatever they happen to be showing. The museum also has a ground-floor auditorium which I didn’t see, and a smaller screening room upstairs, the exterior of which is done up to evoke an old style Egyptian revival movie palace. I imagine this place is great for screenings. Continue reading “Museum of the Moving Image”

SculptureCenter

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  3/5
Time spent 58 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Sam Anderson’s delightfully spooky cluster of sculptures, all titled “E,” part of her basement installation called “The Park.”

Sam Anderson, "The Park," SculptureCenter
Hello, Ladies

SculptureCenter, Queens, New YorkSculptureCenter, a museum dedicated to, yes, sculpture, resides in an historic old trolley garage in the eye of the gentrification storm that is Long Island City these days.  The stroll there from the Queensboro Plaza subway station boggles the mind — new residential high rises seem to be sprouting on every single lot for blocks around.

Evolution

SculptureCenter has a venerable history. An artist named Dorothea Denslow founded a group called The Clay Club back in the 1920s. Photos suggest a  jolly bunch of flappers and rogues united by their love of sculpture.  Resident in a couple of different spots in Manhattan during most of the 20th century, the organization rebranded as the Sculpture Center, I guess to sound more grown-up.  With the move to Long Island City in 2001, it gained space even as it lost its space (and its “the”) to become “SculptureCenter.” Continue reading “SculptureCenter”

Fisher Landau Center for Art

**UPDATE AS OF 16 MARCH 2018.** I’m saddened to learn that the Fisher Landau Center for Art has closed.  It was off the beaten path and kept eccentric hours but I really liked that place when I reviewed it last July, and I’m sorry I only got to go once.  I’m leaving the review below, but please don’t try to visit it. 

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value 4/5 
Should you go?  4/5
Time spent 52 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Many of the pieces on display made me smile, one made me laugh out loud.

Diptych, Fisher Landau Center, Queens
Ricci Albenda, “Diptych,” 2005. Acrylic on wood panel.

I don’t know why I chuckled at a painting of the word “diptych.” It’s a fairly mild art joke. I was just enjoying the museum, rounded the corner, and appreciated the cognitive dissonance.

Fisher Landau Center for Art, Queens New York

The Parachute Harness Factory Museum

Here’s another novel adaptive reuse of a non-museum building into a museum.  The Fisher Landau Center for Art resides in a former parachute harness factory in a random and as-yet ungentrified part of Long Island City.   Emily Fisher Landau originally bought the building just to warehouse her huge collection of modern and contemporary art, but realized some years back that the place had character, and could in fact show some of that art off to the public.  So she had it painted white, created airy, beautifully lit, columned interiors, and opened it for free to anyone intrepid enough to find their way there. Continue reading “Fisher Landau Center for Art”

Louis Armstrong House Museum

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  4/5
Should you go?  4/5
Time spent 82 minutes
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.

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.

Satchmobile, Louis Armstrong House Museum, Queens
Quick, Dizzy, to the Satchmobile!

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 House Museum, Corona, Queens

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.

Louis Armstrong House Museum, Queens, New York

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…

Bathroom, Louis Armstrong House Museum, Queens

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

Louis Armstrong House
The gift shop’s in Louis Armstrong’s garage

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!

Exhibit Room, with inevitable brief DVD introduction

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.

Koi pond, Louis Armstrong HouseThe 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.

Garden, Louis Armstrong House

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

Louis Armstrong House
New interpretive center coming soon…

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.

Trumpet, Louis Armstrong House
Steiner trumpet, gift to Armstrong from King George V, July 1934.

For Reference:

Address 34-56 107th Street, Flushing, Queens
Website louisarmstronghouse.org
Cost  General Admission:  $10, with tour