Jazz enthusiasts and history aficionados now have a remarkable destination to celebrate the legacy of the iconic jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong.
A newly opened Louis Armstrong Center, located just across the street from the couple’s former home turned museum in the New York borough of Queens, offers visitors an experience into the musician’s illustrious life. The center proudly houses a 60,000-piece archive that provides a glimpse into the life and career of the jazz maestro.
Besides the archive, which contains many personal items of Louis and Lucille, the new $26-million building also houses a performance space and a permanent exhibit.
Wedged between the residential houses of Corona, Queens, the 14,000-square-foot Louis Armstrong Center is not your average exhibition space, devoid of pomp but not of circumstance.
“In a neighborhood comprising modest two-story houses, we wanted to keep the building in the scale of its surroundings while creating an urban precinct that notes the singular work of the man whose music underlies so much of what we listen to today,” Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson of Caples Jefferson Architects, the firm that designed the center, are quoted as saying on the museum’s website.
Louis Armstrong considered one of the best jazz trumpeters of all time, achieved world fame with songs like “What a Wonderful World” and “Hello, Dolly,” he was born in New Orleans. He and his fourth wife, Lucille, moved to Queens in 1943. Following Lucille’s death in 1983, their house was eventually acquired by the city of New York and turned into a museum in 2003.
