I'd read about a special spot that I was pretty curious to visit, and SFS was game for an adventure. We took the 7 train to 103 Street, which is a few stops shy of Flushing Meadows/Shea Stadium/ Citi Field.
We had to walk a few blocks to 107 Street...
We were almost there....
We finally made it!
Yep- we finally found the Louis Armstrong House Museum.
Louis and his wife Lucille moved into this house in 1943 and lived there the rest of their lives. The house was declared a national landmark in 1976, and the interior has been preserved exactly as it was when the Armstrongs lived there.The museum runs guided tours on the hour, and since we arrived a bit early, we had an opportunity to check out the garden next to the house. 
It was a very tranquil spot- Lucille was a big fan of Asian-inspired gardens.
This is SFS doing his Satchmo impression.
And a shot of me at the garden's gate.
Back inside the museum, they converted a portion of the house into a mini-museum of Louis' memorabilia. The first thing that jumped out at me was all the collages. Apparently Louis LOVED to scrapbook/collage. He used all sorts of images- from press photos to newspaper clippings, he had hundreds of pages of collages. Lucille told him that his collages/scrapbooks were taking up too much room, so he took to collaging tape boxes. The museum has a few on display, while the rest have been photographed for a new book. As a scrapbooker, I loved seeing those projects!
When Louis passed away, a lot of his possessions were sold at auction. A good friend of his purchased/saved a lot of items, and gifted them to the museum. You can see Louis' robe, some figurines, and even a portion of a banister from the juvenile home he lived in when he was a child.
On the left you can see one of Louis' trumpets. Though he played it for a while, he gave it to a fellow musician who had admired it backstage one day. The bell was engraved to say "Property of Louis Armstrong".
Now, I must admit... I wasn't supposed to take the pictures I've posted above. I somehow MISSED the "No Photography" sign... oops!
Here's the landmark plaque on the exterior of the house. 
And here's the front door to Louis Armstrong's house!
As you've probably guessed by now, I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside the house. But let me tell you, it was quite a sight! When Lucille and Louis go married, Louis was spending 300 days a year on the road. Lucille wanted to make a home base for them; she decided to find a place near where she grew up, and her parents still lived in the area. Lucille purchased and decorated the house before Louis ever saw it. There was wallpaper in EVERY room (even the closets were wallpapered on the inside). I think my favorite room was the kitchen- the whole thing was turquoise! There's a tiny little picture on the museum website (click here to check it out)... when the kitchen was installed it had the most cutting edge technology. The 6 burner stove was custom made for the Armstrongs, they had a subzero refrigerator created to match the turquoise cabinets, and Kitchen-Aid created a dish washer to match as well. But the best part of the kitchen was the motor built into the counter top- it had all sorts of attachments, like a blender, juicer, and mixing bowl... all you had to do was swap the machine on top of the apparatus- how cool is that?
Louis' love of technology didn't end there. He was a big fan of reel-to-reel tapes. As the owner of one of the first prototypes of the machine, he would create his own "mix tapes" by recording his favorite songs from vinyl records onto reels of tape. This would allow him to travel with his favorite music (as the reels were easier to travel with than the records)... it's like he had his own version of the iPod! When Louis passed, there were over 650 reels recorded- and every one of the tape boxes had been collaged! Sometimes Louis would record the vinyl songs onto the reels using a microphone instead of a more direct route, which meant that he could also add his thoughts, improvisations over the top of the music. The museum played some of these examples for us- one time Louis improvised above an opera aria on his trumpet, while another time he recorded Sousa's Semper Fidelis, and started scatting on top of it! (He went on to explain on tape that he didn't know that he knew the piece- but he had played it when he was younger and recognized it upon hearing it. The tour guide told us that big bands would often slice the titles off their music to ensure that other bands wouldn't steal it, which is why Louis didn't recognize the title.)
But the best part of the tour was learning about Louis' wonderful personality. On top of recording music on his tapes, he also recorded interviews, conversations, and even dinner parties. The tourguide played one snippet of Louis' conversation with his granddaughter. He asked to hear Mary Had A Little Lamb, and she obliged after a little discussion. Then Louis told her about Mary and her bear: Mary had a little bear, whose fur was soft and fine. And everywhere that Mary went, the bear was close behind. He had come up with the rhyme on the spot, but boy was his granddaughter impressed.
And my favorite little story was about Louis' interaction with his neighborhood. Most of his neighbors never really understood the magnitude of his fame- they just knew him as Louis. When he would return from tour, he would walk up to the balcony of his house and play his trumpet. This was the signal for all the neighborhood kids to come running, for they would help him unload the tour bus (carrying instruments, trunks and gear). After everything was unloaded, he would treat the kids to bowls of ice cream, and they would watch westerns on TV together.
I'll admit- I liked Satchmo before as a musician (hello High Society)... but this tour made me really appreciate him as a person! If you ever find yourself in the neighborhood, I highly recommend a visit- it's a great way to spend $8!!
That's it for me- thanks for stopping by! I hope you had a wonderful weekend- Happy Monday!
