Queens Field Trip

Corona, not screaming!

Thom and I toured the home of Louis Armstrong where he resided with his fourth wife, Lucille Wilson, from 1943 until his death in 1971.

No photos were allowed inside the very colorful interior, exactly as Lucille, a former Cotton Club singer, left it when she died more than a decade later.

Though the couple had no children of their own, they were beloved by the neighborhood kids.

The Louis Armstrong Center, across the street, opened only in 2023.  It's just the right size.

Other than glancing at magazine profiles, watching Armstrong co-star with Barbra Streisand in Hello, Dolly! and seeing him blow his trumpet on "The Ed Sullivan Show," everything I knew about Satchmo came from A Wonderful World, a musical based on his life.  "People here who saw it praised the music and the dancing but thought too much of the story was exaggerated," said our guide, a professional saxophonist with a deep love of jazz.  They should know:  Armstrong recorded his legacy on more than 900 reel-to-reel audio tapes, now digitized.  Visitors to the house are treated to excerpts of his voice speaking on a variety of subjects, and playing some music.

April 15, 1966

In spite of his love for his wife and home, America's Jazz Ambassador toured 300 days of the year, visiting a total of 65 countries during his lifetime.  He carried a suitcase engraved with his nickname, "Satchmo."  

This trumpet, which Lucille had bronzed for Armstrong's headstone, was so often an object of attempted theft that Lucille had it replaced with plaster in Flushing Cemetery.  I'll have to visit Louis there.

The second part of our field trip required walking half an hour to the Queens Museum, built as an ice skating rink (Thom remembered) for the 1964 World's Fair.  We went to see his nephew's contribution to "Umber Majeed J😊Y TECH," a not-easily-described (or understood) exhibit that explores the Pakistan pavilion at same World's Fair from the perspective of the contemporary diaspora.

The artist, a thirty-something woman, hired Jimmy to produce the three-dimensional animation, including these "pink pearls," although I think it's probably not cool to identify them that way any longer.

Another exhibit with allusions to the '64 Worlds Fair resonated more with this baby boomer. In fact, I had just mentioned the work that inspired it to our guide earlier when he mentioned the event had celebrated "Louis Armstrong Day" on June 30 after the trumpeter finally dislodged the Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" from the top of the charts with "Hello, Dolly" his most popular recording ever.  A seminal moment in pop culture, it signaled the squares (i.e. the fair organizers) weren't entirely done for, not yet.  They also rejected 13 Most Wanted Men, the mural Andy Warhol had been commissioned to create.  Governor Nelson Rockefeller feared it would offend one of his his important constituencies because so many of the criminals' last names were Italian!

"America's Most Help Wanted (After Warhol)" by Abang-guard (2025)

The Filipino artistic collective is getting a lot of contemporary mileage spoofing the work of old white male artists.

"Corazon Amurao In Window (After Lichtenstein)"
by Abang-guard (2025)

What I mistook to be whale bone scrimshaw turned out to be buffalo bone, carved by a contemporary indigenous artists whose name I regretfully forgot to capture.  Such incredible detail.

Speaking of incredible detail, we also checked out "The Panorama of the City of New York On Long-Term View," billed as a "helicopter ride over New York's five boroughs" when it was constructed for the '64 World's Fair, and updated (with more than 60,000 buildings replaced!) for the opening of the Queens Museum in 1994.  It's the only exhibit in the place that makes adequate use of the building's cavernous space which definitely could use a re-imagining.

While some more recent landmarks have been added to the scale 3D map on a piecemeal basis (including Citi Field and Yankee Stadium), other extraordinary historical changes are not reflected. Oddly, 27 buildings in Battery Park City were replaced without elaboration in the descriptive text while the Twin Towers remain standing.  No doubt that's a lose/lose situation for museum's administration.  Better not to have adopted the piecemeal strategy IMHO.

More than 15 years ago, the museum launched an "Adopt-the Building" campaign to raise funds for another city-wide renovation.  After celebrating my 47th year in 47 Pianos (circled in red below on the left) this month, I can buy a year-long lease on the property for $100, about 12 times less than I'm currently paying in monthly rent!!!!!