On The Map is where we highlight famous, and not as well-known, musical sites that you can visit. In this edition, we turn the spotlight on one of the music world’s legendary Jazz artists, Louis Armstrong, with a look at the museum that lives inside his former home in New York. Let’s explore!
THE SITE
The Louis Armstrong House Museum is located at 34-56 107th Street in Corona, New York, a neighborhood in Queens, east of Manhattan. Armstrong lived in the house with his wife Lucille for almost thirty years. Across the street, you can also visit their Louis Armstrong Center, which opened in 2023, and houses 60,000 pieces of Armstrong memorabilia, archival papers, photos, books, musical instruments, etc.
LOUIS
Oh, there was no one like Louis Armstrong. That unmistakable voice, that smile, those sounds he created through his trumpet. Jazz music became iconic because of musicians like him. But there was only one Satchmo. Born in 1901, just a few blocks from the notorious red-light district known as Storyville in New Orleans, Louisiana, he grew up very poor. At the end of 1912, when he was eleven years old, he was arrested and sent to the Colored Waif’s Home For Boys; but it was there that he learned to play the cornet.
By 1919, Armstrong was playing with Kid Ory, a well-known bandleader and trombonist in New Orleans, which led to gigs on Mississippi River riverboats such as the Dixie Belle. In 1920, he moved to St Louis and then on to Chicago, where he played with his mentor in the King Oliver Band. The “Roaring Twenties” saw Armstrong making a name for himself, and by the 1930s, he was making records that would influence musicians for decades to come. He was on the radio and performing for audiences all over the world.
Armstrong recorded his most beloved song, “What A Wonderful World,” in 1967. “Hello Dolly!” won the Song Of The Year Grammy in 1965. He recorded “La Vie En Rose” in 1950, “St James Infirmary” in 1928, and “When The Saints Go Marching In” in 1938. He recorded and/or performed live with legends such as Ella Fitzgerald, Barbra Streisand, Duke Ellington, Johnny Cash, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby.
Armstrong passed away on July 06, 1971, from a heart attack at his home in Corona. He was 69 years old. He is buried at Flushing Cemetery in Queens.
THE HISTORY OF THE HOUSE
“The house was built in 1910, and the Armstrongs moved in the home in 1943,” Regina Bain, Executive Director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, told me in a recent email. “Lucille Armstrong bought the home with funds from her career as a Cotton Club dancer.” Lucille, Louis’ fourth and last wife, tired of living in hotels following their marriage in 1942, picked out the house on 107th Street. “The Heraldo family knew that Lucille Armstrong was looking for a home,” continued Bain. “When the home next door to them on 107th Street went up for sale, they let Lucille know. Selma Heraldo was a beloved member of our museum community. When she passed, she left her home to the museum and it is now part of the 3-building Armstrong campus along with the historic home and the new Center.”
“After Lucille passed in 1983, it took two decades to go through the process of administering and preparing the home for visitors,” Bain informed me about how the house became a museum. “No one has lived in the home since the Armstrongs, a rare occurrence for House Museums. All of the furnishings, the wallpaper, and the artwork are their own. When you step into the home, you feel as if they just stepped out for a minute and will be back.”
Following Louis’ death, “Lucille Armstrong used the ensuing years to ensure the legacy, leading the process for the home to be designated as a National and New York historical landmark,” Bain said. “She willed the home to the city of New York for the express purpose of it becoming a museum. With the support of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation and Queens College, the Archives opened to the public in the 1990s and the home opened for public tours in 2003.”
The museum also hosts concerts and other activities. “Last year, we hosted twenty-six concerts and a host of other activities like yoga classes, collage workshops, and trumpet lessons.” The museum, in fact, just received the IMLS National Medal For Museums, the nation’s highest honor given to museums and libraries that demonstrate significant impact in their communities. “It is a phenomenal honor to receive the National Medal for our decades of service to and with the community.”
VISITING
The museum is open Thursday-Saturday, 11:00am-4:00pm. Advance-purchased tickets are highly recommended. It is a 45-minute guided tour and although photography is not allowed inside the house itself, photos are allowed inside the Center and the garden.
You will start your visit at the Center. Tickets for both the house and the Center are $20 for adults, $14 for seniors 65 and older, students, military and veterans, and visitors with disabilities; Corona residents are charged $5, while children six years and younger get in free. Prices are less if you just want to tour the Here To Stay exhibit at the Center. Keep in mind that street parking is limited and the museum advises that visitors utilize mass transit or ride shares when coming to the museum.
Once inside, there is so much to see and learn about Louis Armstrong. Bain told me this about the Here To Stay exhibit inside the Center: “Visitors will find many original objects, including the trumpet! We have seven trumpets as part of the Armstrong Archives and the most ornate of them, the trumpet given to Armstrong by King George V, is on display in the Here to Stay Exhibit. You’ll also find Armstrong’s FBI file and a short film about how the story of the Little Rock Nine – nine Black students attempting to integrate an Arkansas high school – led to that file.”
THE LEGACY
Bonerama trombonist Mark Mullins shared this with me recently about Armstrong’s influence: “Louis Armstrong created and established a level of musicianship and performance skills that no one had seen before, all while entertaining broad audiences. The complete package. New Orleans and the world had not seen this done on that level before, and he set a super high bar on what greatness from New Orleans is supposed to be to this day.”
Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who chronicled Armstrong in his ten-episode documentary Jazz in 2001, wrote in the companion book: “I knew from the outset that Armstrong was important to the history, but he had mostly seemed to me a guy with a smile and a handkerchief, a singer of popular songs like ‘Hello Dolly!’ and ‘It’s A Wonderful World’. I had no inkling of the truth, borne out in interview after interview, record after record: Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music.”
For Bain, there was more to him than music. “In addition to being an amazing vocalist and instrumentalist, not many know that he was a prolific visual artist, including hundreds of collage works decorating his collection of tape box audio recordings. I also love that he traveled to sixty-five countries, traversing not only geography but languages, politics, and culture, becoming beloved around the world and across nations.”
The city of New Orleans has always loved Louis. In 2001, they honored him by renaming their airport the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. You can also take a walk through Louis Armstrong Park near the city’s French Quarter. Satchmo SummerFest is held every year in early August and trumpet player Kermit Ruffins does an annual tribute to Armstrong every year at Jazz Fest. There is a new exhibit, It All Started In Jane Alley: Louis Armstrong In New Orleans, at the New Orleans Jazz Museum At The Old US Mint. And if you venture over to Baton Rouge, you can get an up close glimpse of Armstrong’s bugle from his time at the Colored Waif’s Home at the Capitol Park Museum.
The Smithsonian National Museum Of African American History & Culture in Washington DC has a few Armstrong-related items, including one of his trumpets. In Chicago, you can walk past his former home at 421 East 44th Street in Bronzeville. In 1995, the United States Post Office issued a Louis Armstrong stamp; in 1949, he was the first Jazz musician to appear on the cover of Time Magazine; he received a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame in 1960; was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame as an Early Influence in 1990; and in 1972, he was posthumously awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy.
LOUIS STILL GOING STRONG
Believe it or not, there is a new recording that dropped last month. Actually, it’s an old live recording from 1968 but it’s having it’s virgin release. Louis In London features thirteen tracks that were recorded in front of a live BBC audience. “Louis in London is a new recording of a live concert recorded by the BBC near the end of Armstrong’s life,” explained Bain. “It’s never been released in this format before. The museum is hosting an archival tour about that concert featuring the music and the stories that made that concert significant. Folks can check it out in our Jazz Room on August 15th.” Tickets can be purchased via the museum’s website.
RECOMMENDED READING
Louis Armstrong: Swing That Music and Satchmo: My Life In New Orleans; Terry Teachout: Pops; Ricky Riccardi: What A Wonderful World; Muriel Weinstein & Frank Morrison: Play Louis Play; Gary Giddins: Satchmo.
WEBSITE
https://www.louisarmstronghouse.org/ – the museum’s website has a ton of information, photographs and archival material that you can look through.
WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR US
If you have been to the Louis Armstrong House Museum, go to Glide’s social media pages & in the comments to this article’s link, post a photo of yourself in front of the house or at the Center. Be sure to tag Glide and the Louis Armstrong House Museum. We want to see you!
Visit Volume 1 of On The Map – The Big House in Macon, GA
Photographs courtesy of the Louis Armstrong House Museum unless otherwise noted
