The Louis Armstrong House Museum
The paradise of a jazz legend
At the peak of his career, jazz musician Louis Armstrong was touring for as many as three hundred days out of a full calendar year. He lived in hotels and motels and suites and trains and busses and private jets. He liked it that way— the two-room shack that he’d shared with his mother growing up in New Orleans had never felt like a home to him. But when he came home from a tour to find out that his wife, Lucille Wilson, had secretly bought a modest brownstone in the Corona neighborhood in Queens, he took one step in the door and fell in love.
Armstrong died in this very house in 1971, and Wilson dedicated the last decade of her life to preserving his legacy. When she passed in 1983, she left the house to the City of New York with the express intention of creating a space for people to come and learn about Armstrong’s life. Today the Brownstone stands, preserved exactly as it was when the two lived there in the 1950’s and 60’s— all original furniture, decor and details that both of them(but mostly Lucille) chose to turn the house into a home.
Unfortunately for readers of this blog, there was no photography allowed inside the house. It really was gorgeous though— it was clear that Lucille was a woman of taste and wanted her home to reflect that. One notable modification that the museum made to the house was that in most rooms we visited there was a button on the wall that our guide would press and an embedded speaker would play a recording of Louis or Lucille talking about the house or the neighborhood or the very room in which we stood. These recordings, along with the very detailed attention to all of the little things that they would have had around the house(I gasped at the period vacuum cleaner in the closet) really made Louis and Lucille feel Alive in the space, as though they were talking to us from one room over and were just about to stride in.
We started in their living room, which was all decked out in white furniture with an ornate chandelier and many of Louis’ most valuable posessions, especially ones he received on international trips, on display. One thing I loved about the recording that played in this room of Lucille talking about when she bought the house is that it subtly addressed an old debate about whether his name is pronounced Lewis or Louie— the museum officially pronounces it Lewis, but Lucille used both versions in one sentence! We moved from there to the dining room, where Louis loved to entertain guests. An entire wall was all mirrored glass to “give the illusion” of the room being larger than it was, but I can’t imagine eating there and not getting distracted. The kitchen was my favorite room of the house. It had floor-to-ceiling blue metallic cupboards that were trés 60s futurism and made me incredibly jealous.
We moved upstairs to the bedroom— the very room that Louis had died in!— and got to see Lucille’s favorite nightgown. The last room of the house was Louis’ studio, an ornate wooden space with cutting-edge recording equipment for the time and a bookshelf of his tapes behind his desk. We got to listen to a few recordings in this room, and it was deeply moving to be standing in a room where Louis recorded himself playing his trumpet and then listening to that very same recording. The last recording was Louis talking about his most famous song, “A Wonderful World”, and telling the listener that he had written it about the neighborhood of Corona where he lived, particularly about the children in the neighborhood who he loved and watched grow and played with. The line “I see babies cry, I watch them grow/They’ll learn much more/Than I’ll ever know” is for them.
Across the street was the Louis Armstrong center, a modern gallery space and performance center opened in 2023. I wasn’t able to visit the performing space but I had a great time wandering around the main gallery looking at displays about different aspects of Louis’ life.
The displays were informative and very cool— so much of Louis’ life, work, and art has been preserved and it was great getting to see it under glass.
The Louis Armstrong House Museum is a really great example of the honoring and preservation of an incredible artsist’s legacy. He was an amazing man who gave so much to the world of music and beyond, but he was also a man who loved his little neighborhood. He loved his backyard, and his study, and he loved playing his trumpet and watching the kids around him grow up. He lived in this house, and in some small way he lives there still.
ADMISSION: $20
GIFT SHOP: Yes
BATHROOM: Yes
WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE: No
UPCOMING MUSEUMS:
April 20 - The Frick Collection
April 25 - Jewish Theological Seminary Library Gallery
May 2 - The Korea Society
May 10 - The Maritime Industry Museum
Fabulous Cathy