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Their new suburban block was home to African-American, German, and Italian working-class families, and Armstrong was delighted. Raised in one of the poorest neighborhoods in New Orleans, he felt instantly at home in Corona. Following Louis Armstrong’s death in 1971, Lucille spent 12 years as a widow in the same house. When she passed away in 1983, she left everything to the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, Inc. and the house to the City of New York.
The gripping 'Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues' confronts the artist's complexities
A longtime neighbor suffered a heart attack over the weekend—Tomas Tavarez, an older Dominican-American man whom I’d noticed watching the music from his porch just a week earlier. The house is a gem frozen in time, as if the Armstrongs have just stepped out. The museum offers daily guided tours to visitors from around the world and features a variety of programs, including concerts, lectures, and seminars. Recently, we were invited to take part in a house tour, which took us through the Armstrongs’ living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and den (deemed Louis’ “man cave”). From the moment we stepped inside, it was evident that Armstrong’s essence completely saturates the house. Strolling through each room slowly, we were given the unique opportunity to see how he lived and where his genius was fostered.
About The Landmark
Authors, researchers and other scholars can visit the Armstrong archives by advance appointment. The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation was the baseline grantor of the Louis Armstrong House Museum and we have been in full support throughout the growth of this historic site. This great achievement is a physical representation of the down-home soulful world of Pops. LAHM is in the midst of a dramatic physical and programmatic transformation marked by the opening of the new Louis Armstrong Center, including a 75-seat performance space, a state of the art multimedia exhibition, and the Armstrong Archival Collections. The Center will allow us to live the Armstrong values of Artistic Excellence, Education and Community through programs such as Armstrong Now! After our tour concluded, we also learned about the forthcoming Louis Armstrong House Museum Education Center, which will sit on the site located across the street from the house museum.
New Center Team
The historic house tour requires the ability to climb two sets of steep stairs and stand for 45 minutes. New jazz and exhibition spaces, and an inaugural show curated by Jason Moran, feature the trumpeter’s history, collaged onto the walls. Shortly after marrying Louis, Lucille Wilson Armstrong was tipped off by a friend in her former Corona neighborhood that a house on the block was for sale, so inexpensive she could buy it with the money she’d saved as a Cotton Club dancer in Harlem. Still, Lucille waited eight months to tell her husband, who generally toured 300 days of the year.
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Louis Armstrong Center opens in Queens, NY - Wallpaper*
Louis Armstrong Center opens in Queens, NY.
Posted: Tue, 31 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
For those eager to delve deeper into LAHM’s cultural offerings, guided tours are available starting at 1pm, with the last tour departing at 5pm. This National Historic Landmark museum welcomes its new addition across the street during Black Music Month and the 80th anniversary of Louis and Lucille Armstrong moving to the legendary jazz trumpeter & singer’s restored home. Visitors have included Wynton Marsalis, Quincy Jones, Tony Bennett, Charlie Watts, Ken Burns, Jon Batiste, Ron Howard, Bette Midler and many more.
Louis Armstrong House Museum Celebrates 80th Anniversary with New Center Opening in Queens, NY
Since 2003, this National Historic Landmark has been open to the public weekly for individual and group tours with support provided by the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Queens College/CUNY, and other lead donors and partners. Louis Armstrong was already a worldwide star — a seasoned headliner with a Hollywood profile — when his wife, Lucille, surprised him with the purchase of a modest house in Corona, Queens, in 1943. He got his first glimpse of the place fresh off tour, rolling up in a taxicab. (He invited the cab driver to come in and check it out with him.) "The more Lucille showed me around the house the more thrill'd I got," Armstrong later wrote. Discover the city’s most unique and surprising places and events for the curious mind.
Caples Jefferson Architects designed the 14,000-square-foot building, staying mindful of the Armstrongs’ love for their community and their neighbors on the block. Explore more of the life and career of Louis Armstrong from anywhere, anytime with the Louis Armstrong House Museum digital guide on Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and culture app. The historic Armstrong home is open for tours by advance registration, Thursdays through Saturdays.
New York City, block by block
Louis Armstrong is a definitive arbiter of Jazz and America’s first Black popular music icon, entertaining millions from heads of state and royalty to the kids on his stoop in the working-class neighborhood of Corona, Queens. The Louis Armstrong House Museum preserves his legacy by offering guided tours of the historic home and preserving Armstrong’s 60,000-piece archives. The brand-new Louis Armstrong Center, located across the street from the historic home, will further help celebrate his legacy by offering year-round exhibitions, performances, readings, lectures, and screenings through an array of public programs for all ages. It now includes the home itself that reflects the personal values of Louis Armstrong and the garden that serves as a place for gatherings and a place for live performances. The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation donated the Armstrong archives in the 1980s and provided the funds to purchase the lot on which the new Center sits. CUNY and Queens College officials, working with state and city legislators and executive offices, led the advocacy for the funding of the $26 million building across the street from the original Armstrong home.
Here to Stay Exhibition Only
Headed by the same architecture firm who built the Louis Armstrong house in 1910, the project broke ground this summer and will include a state-of-the-art exhibition gallery and a 68-seat jazz club when completed. Today, the internationally renowned Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, Queens, announced the official opening date of its new state-of-the-art building, preserving and expanding the legacy and ideals of America’s first Black popular music icon. Armstrong’s values of Artistic Excellence, Education and Community will be fostered in Here to Stay, the new Center’s exhibition, curated by award-winning pianist, composer and Kennedy Center Artistic Director for Jazz, Jason Moran. One wouldn’t know from the sidewalk that the interior of the house is a more or less perfect reflection of the Armstrongs’ life circa 1969, when Lucille made her final round of renovations during her husband’s lifetime with the help of her interior decorator, Morris Grossberg. Armstrong’s half-empty bottle of Lanvin cologne still sits on the dresser in the master bedroom; their old Electrolux vacuum cleaner is still stashed in a hallway closet.
Among its steadfast champions was the museum's former Board chair, philanthropist Jerome Chazen, who died last year. That their dream finally came to fruition, after more than two decades of hopeful planning, is a testament to the strength of that vision — and the efforts of those who carried it forward. "We're thankful for the community that raised us up," says Regina Bain, Executive Director of the House Museum. "It's all in the spirit of Louis and Lucille — because they made such an impact on this community, and on this block, that people wanted to fight for this space." Perhaps most touching is Armstrong’s pure and undying affinity for his neighborhood. While Corona may seem like an unlikely place to house a museum, no other location would be appropriate to honor Armstrong’s legacy.
In 1977, it was designated a National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark. In 1991, recently retired director Michael Cogswell and archivists carried out 72 shipping cartons of Armstrong’s manuscripts, artifacts, and other memorabilia, currently housed in Flushing at the Kupferberg Center for the Arts. In 2017, the Louis Armstrong Education Center broke ground across the street from the house museum. The 14,000-square-foot, $23 million building is being designed by New York City-based Caples Jefferson Architects. When complete, it will include an exhibition gallery, a 68-seat jazz club, and, on the second floor, an archive for those artifacts.
Louis died in 1971, days after celebrating his 71st birthday at a party in the garden lot adjacent to their home. After Lucille’s death in 1983, the last true original-original died in 2011. Selma Heraldo had lived all her 88 years next door to what would become the Armstrongs’ home and was the neighborhood’s last human link to them both.
Those are the times I feel closest to him, like he’s right there on the block,” Riccardi said. “You can hear street noise, birds outside the window, hear kids playing in the street.” It started to sound like the verse of a very familiar song. The day before the block party, workers halted construction on the forthcoming Louis Armstrong House Museum Research Collections to place a hard hat atop the head of Wynton Marsalis, who was filming a segment for ESPN. Recently Tony Bennett, who in 1970 painted the remarkable portrait of Armstrong displayed in his second-floor study—signed Benedetto—came by to borrow the painting for an exhibit.
No one has resided in the building since then and its furnishings remain very much as they were. Today, the Museum is administered by Queens College, which also holds the research collections of the museum. Funds were awarded by the Office of the Governor, the New York State Senate, New York State Assembly, Office of the New York City Mayor, Office of the Queens Borough President, and the New York City Council. The Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY) led the construction project. The staff and board of the museum for the past 15 years, including former Director, Michael Cogswell, worked tirelessly to ensure the new building’s success. And yet for decades, the Louis Armstrong House Museum has been a well-kept secret on a quiet street in Corona.
This was Louis’s “man cave,” a room where he could write letters, make reel-to-reel tapes and entertain friends and guests, including Queens neighbors Dizzy Gillespie and Clark Terry. Even more valuable is the treasure trove of information that we didn’t expect to come away with. We learned, for instance, that Lucille had a knack for decorating (evidenced by the house’s reflective wall paper, its laminated wooden cabinets and the funky blue hue of the kitchen), and that Louis Armstrong swore by Swiss Kriss laxatives, which he used daily.
Standing on the shoulders of the jazz and community greats who have come before us, the new Louis Armstrong Center invites today’s musicians, neighbors, and global fans to discover Louis and Lucille Armstrong’s story from a new perspective. We will bring the Armstrongs’ unique archives alive through new interactive events. And we will ensure that music once again rings out on 107th Street through groundbreaking programs in collaboration with emerging artists and contemporary icons. Working with the museum’s Grammy-winning Director of Research Collections Ricky Riccardi and Executive Director Regina Bain, C&G Partners (MoMA, 9/11 Memorial & Museum, Smithsonian, NASA) designed the exhibition with Art Guild(Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Martin Guitar Museum). The 60,000 photos, recordings, manuscripts, letters & mementos in the Louis Armstrong Archive will be returning home to the block where the Armstrongs lived and built the collection. Caples Jefferson Architects designed the 14,000-square-foot building to expand the capacity of the historic house museum and to allow many more people to appreciate the legacy of Louis Armstrong, the man and his music.
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