Poppenhusen Institute

Poppenhusen Institute entry hall

7/10/2011

Museums: Poppenhusen Institute (15 min) …………………… Free

Poppenhusen Institute

On the northern fringe of Queens lies a neighborhood under siege.  Called College Point after a college that closed over one hundred and fifty years ago, this neighborhood was once a small town of Victorian homes, summer resorts and German beer gardens, yet much of the remnants of that past are being slowly demolished today in favor of low cost, high density apartment buildings.  In the heart of this vanishing town lies an ancient community center with the esoteric name of the Poppenhusen Institute. 

A sign on the front proudly declares it the site of the first free kindergarten in the United States (began July 1^st, 1870), but despite its official Landmark status the institute is not really set up for visitors and was difficult to get into.  We’ve found that historic buildings occasionally get noted as museums even if they are not set up as such, and this appears to be the case with the Poppenhusen Institute.  However, it was on our list and I was unable to determine its museum-y qualities online, so Paul and I combed their facebook site for times when they were open and we ended up crashing their summer fundraiser.  When we got there, the flea market and bake sale were up and running and the Beatles cover band was in full swing.  We didn’t know anyone at this neighborhood party, but we’ve gone far stranger places in the pursuit of our goal (see our post on the retirement home in Riverdale), so Paul entered the raffle and we gamely set about exploring the building.

Jail cells in the Poppenhusen Institute

The Institute is named for the German-American industrialist Conrad Poppenhusen, who built a factory here to manufacture hard rubber goods, transforming College Point from a sleepy farming community into a factory town.  Poppenhusen built the institute in 1868 to serve the community that grew up around the factory, and in addition to the kindergarten, this building also served as the local bank, the first library in College Point, a courtroom and the Sheriffs Office.  Paul and I stumbled upon two jail cells in the basement, left over from its law and order days.

Upstairs there were classrooms for the institute’s karate and dance classes, a large ballroom and a limited exhibit on local Native Americans, complete with a grass hut and a manikin dressed in a loincloth.  For me, the most touching part of the museum was a series of poster boards in the back, with pictures of the historic buildings that College Point has lost to development.  Faded black and white photographs of buildings were surrounded with notes of the battles that had been waged to save them and the descriptions of what has been lost.  It felt like looking at photos of lost friends whose lives had been tragically cut short by the rapid pace of high-density development.

Joe Beresheim's Butcher Shop. A note reads: "This building still stands."

The Poppenhusen Institute itself was almost demolished in 1983, but the community rallied to save it and on this occasion they won.   Its nice to know that some pieces of the old College Point will be around a little longer.

Pauline: 2 out of 10. Historic community center, but not much to see and limited hours.

Paul: 4 out of 10. A noble last stand against the destruction of a neighborhood.

Sewing class at the Poppenhusen Institutue

 

Louis Armstrong House Museum

Louis Armstrong on stage

7/10/2011

Museums:  Louis Armstrong House Museum (1 hour) ……….………… $10

As part of our crazy mission, Paul and I have seen 25 historic buildings during the last year and a half, giving us a kind of unique expertise on the subject, and while our opinions differ on specific buildings, we are unanimous on what makes a historic house successful: its all about the tour. 

Take the Old Stone House in Brooklyn: it had a centerstage role in the bloody Battle for Brooklyn and an amusing later role as the club house of the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers, but all was conveyed by dated dioramas and raged posterboards.  The experience failed to engage and we left after 15 minutes.  Contrast this with the Van Courtland House, with a minor Revolutionary War role and staid history as a country house for a wealthy but faded Bronx family, but the docent gave a gripping and detailed lecture on everything from George Washington’s clever use of war time expenditures to the horrors of 18th century toilets.  It had us fascinated for 3 hours and a pair of jaded Bronx high school students peppering him with questions until the museum closed.  Clearly, the tour makes or breaks the historic house experience.

Louis Armstrong House Museum

Today we discovered our favorite historic house to date, which, not coincidentally, also had one of the best tours.  The house is the Louis Armstrong House Museum and was the home of famous jazz musician Louis Armstrong and his wife Lucille from 1943 until his death in 1971.  The house is an unassuming two-floor townhouse in the working class neighborhood of Corona, Queens, and at first glance it doesn’t seem much like the home of a superstar like Armstrong, who was one of the greatest musicians of his age and quite a celebrity.  However, the plainness of the house and neighborhood is actually what Armstrong (and we) loved about the place. 

Louis Armstrong's "Hello Dolly" Gold Record Award, 1964

Early in the tour, the docent tells a story of how Armstrong’s wife Lucille once tried to buy a townhouse in the swank Upper West Side neighborhood in Manhattan.  At the time America was still racially divided, but in this case race wasn’t the Armstrongs’ problem.  Louis was so famous that when he stepped out of the car to see the townhouse, he was immediately mobbed by fans and autograph seekers.  Here in Corona, Lucille’s family was well established and everyone knew Louis as her husband, and he was left alone.  This was the one place in the world where the great Louis Armstrong could take a break from his grueling schedule of 300 concerts a year and just go to the barber on the corner like a normal guy and play his trumpet on the front porch for the neighborhood kids.  Knowing that Lucille would have preferred a Manhattan brownstone, Armstrong bricked the front of their house to look like one, and offered free brickwork to anyone on the block to make their neighborhood resemble Manhattan just a bit (only one household took him up on it).  This was a house where a superstar could get a taste of the quiet life, and he clearly treasured it.

Louis Armstrong writing about his neighborhood in Queens

We know his feelings about the house because Louis was somewhat obsessive about documenting his life, writing two autobiographies, hundreds of pages of handwritten memoirs and most interestingly, leaving hundreds of reel to reel recordings of his daily life.  His beloved reel-to-reel player is still on display in his upstairs den and the best parts of the tour are when the docent reaches over and presses a button in the wall and you hear recordings of Louis hanging out with his wife, teaching his young niece to sing, or talking about how much he loved his den. 

 

The house is capably managed by the music school at Queens College (the Kupferberg Center for the Arts) and they could have focused the tour on Louis Armstrong’s legendary music (and no one would have blamed them) but instead the tour explores the man behind the legend and you feel like you get to know him personally.  You hear about Louis’s rough upbringing eating out of dumpsters in New Orleans.  When you see his gold plated bathroom the guide includes the embarrassing detail that Louis spent a lot of time in the bathroom due an overuse of laxatives initiated by his mother after dumpster diving.  You hear how he got that scar on his lip, and the sad stories of his three failed marriages until he finally “got it right” with Lucille, who was clearly the love of his life. 

Gold plated bathroom at the Louis Armstrong House

By the end of the tour you’re calling him by his nickname Satchemo and you know what it stands for.  You get comfortable in his homey den, looking at his reading glasses laid on handwritten sheet music and wondering if you could get a nip from the half bottle of whiskey waiting in the cabinet.  You hear him say how much he loved the portrait on the wall, painted by his good friend Tony Bennett.  Then, as the tour is winding down and you feel you know him like that sweet older gentleman on your block, the guide finally plays a song over the house speakers and the sounds of Satchemo’s magnificent trumpet escorts you out.

Trumpet given to Louis Armstrong by King George V in 1933

Kitchen of the Louis Armstrong House

Lucille is brought to life on the tour as well.  Louis met her when she was a dancer at the Cotton Club, and for a while she toured the world with him until she’d had enough of the crazy schedule and bought the house in Queens.  Lucille chose the décor and the home was clearly decorated by a woman who knew what she liked.  You may not love the foil wallpaper on the ceilings or the all-teal kitchen, but you can’t say that she didn’t have strong opinions on style, or probably anything else.

Louis and Lucille Armstrong's garden

The Louis Armstrong House is seen only by guided tour that leaves every hour on the hour.  If you’re very lucky, you’ll get to meet the gracious Selma Heraldo who lives next door.  Selma was Lucille’s best friend and toured with the Armstrongs.  Although the tour interrupted her gardening, Selma greeted us like visiting friends and her stories lent an even more personable air to this engaging historic house.

Pauline: 8 out of 10:  A glimpse into the private life of a superstar amid classic 60’s décor.

Paul: 9 out of 10:  It’s amazing that someone as famous as Louis Armstrong could live a normal life.

Eldridge Street Synagogue / Tenement Museum

Eldridge Street Synagogue

4/18/10, Sunday

MUSEUMS:

Museum at Eldridge Street  ……….....…...  2.5 hrs

Tenement Museum …................................. 1 hr

COST:

Museum at Eldridge Street ……......……... $10 each, tour included

   Lecture on synagogue art …….........…... Free

Tenement Museum ..................................... $20 each, tour included

Eldridge Street Synagogue window

The more we get to know New York City, the more we realize that this city of immigrants is not a melting pot, it’s more like a kaleidoscope.  Manhattan and most of the boroughs are broken up into distinct regions, often with visible boundaries, defined by the widely divergent cultures, languages and attitudes of the groups that live there.  Several neighborhoods have had cultures so powerful that they became iconic, forever changing the fiber of the city in a way that echoes even after the neighborhoods have shifted and moved on.  These neighborhoods have names like Harlem, South Bronx, Hell’s Kitchen, Park Slope, Little Italy and East Village; names that evoke a zeitgeist and identity that have become part of NYC’s landscape.  Today we visited one of these legendary neighborhoods: the Lower East Side.

The Lower East Side has long been a starting point for families immigrating from far away lands.  Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, Irish, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Chinese and just about every other nationality that has passed through this city have settled here en masse at one time or another.  The Lower East Side includes some of the most infamous areas in NYC history (the Bowery, Five Points and Alphabet City), as well as some of the most celebrated (East Village and Chinatown).   The region is continuously reborn with each new wave of immigrants, and is a mix of old and young, rich and poor, hipsters and hippies, and small shops and large conglomerates.  Currently, this traditionally lower class neighborhood is undergoing a gentrification of sorts, but its roots are clearly visible.  Landmarks like the Essex Street market, Katz’s Deli and Gus’s pickles still do a brisk business, and old tenement buildings stand shoulder to shoulder with the gleaming glass and steel condominium towers of modern NYC.

Eldridge Street Synagogue

Not surprisingly, this neighborhood is absolutely chock-full of museums.  There are several art museums, notably the controversial New Museum of Contemporary Art.  However, most Lower East Side museums focus on the history of this great neighborhood, like the Museum of Chinese in the Americas and the Museum of the American Gangster.  Today’s museums both focused on immigrant lives around the turn of the century.  These museums were the Museum at Eldridge Street (which exhibits the Eldridge Street Synagogue) and the Tenement Museum.

Eldridge Street Synagogue woman's balcony

The Eldridge Street Synagogue is one of the oldest Eastern European Orthodox Jewish places of worship in North America.  When it was completed in 1887, close to 400,000 Jews lived in this neighborhood, and the synagogue demonstrates the wealth and piety of this community.  At the time, local press marveled at its imposing Moorish inspired edifice, elaborate brass fixtures and stained glass windows.  We fell in love with its beautiful murals, arches and spectacular circular windows.  It reminded us of mujedar places of worship that we’ve seen in southern Spain, and we both felt it was a jewel of NYC architecture.

Synagogue before restoration

For fifty years, the Eldridge Street Synagogue flourished, not just as a place of worship, but as community center where Jewish immigrants could get help, lodging, food, and jobs. However, as time passed, the congregation dwindled.  Immigration laws began to limit new arrivals, the Great Depression reduced congregants' fortunes and many Jews moved out of the city into less crowded housing in the suburbs.  In the 1930s, the shrunken congregation moved out of the great sanctuary and began to use the smaller, cheaper-to-heat house of study in the basement.  By 1950, the roof leaked, widows were broken, the inner stairs were unsound, and the remaining congregants cordoned off the sanctuary.

Thus the beautiful sanctuary room remained empty for twenty-five years, falling slowly into ruin.  Fortunately for us, New York was unwilling to let this treasure fade away, and in 1986 the non-sectarian, not-for-profit Eldridge Street Project was founded to restore the synagogue.  The restoration has been extensive, taking 20 years, $18.5 million, and legions of artists, but, with the installation of the stunning circular sanctuary window, it was finally completed in 2010.

 

Eldridge Street Synagogue Sanctuary Window, by Kiki Smith

The synagogue is seen with a guided tour that lasts about 30 minutes.  Our tour guide was an immigrant herself, from Eastern Europe, and her tour covered the history of the building and neighborhood, and also gave a highly informative hands-on comparative religion course on the rituals of Orthodox Judaism, all of which was definitely new to us.  We felt the grooves in the floor were men slid their feet as they prayed, learned the difference between a cantor and a rabbi, and stood at the head of the synagogue and slid open the beautiful carved doors of the ark where Torah scrolls were kept.  We loved experiencing pieces of a house of worship that were at once both foreign and familiar to us, and by the end of the tour we could almost hear the voices of ghostly cantors echoing in this beautiful building.

RATING: Eldridge Street Synagogue 

Pauline: 9 out of 10.  Stunning architecture, interesting history and a great tour.

Paul: 9 out of 10. A beloved building built by a community, for a community and saved by a community.

The Tenement Museum

A few blocks from the synagogue is the Tenement Museum, a museum in an old tenement apartment building.  Tenements were once the first homes of the newly immigrated in New York City and this building is the complete opposite of the synagogue; instead of beauty, wealth and spaciousness, tenements are ugly, poor and cramped.  Yet despite the surface differences, its interesting to note these museums cover the same time period, and the same people who lived in these tiny, crowded apartments may have worshiped at the synagogue down the street.  The contrast for these people must have been staggering, as it certainly was for us.

Stairway in entrance hall of tenement apartments

The museum is in a real tenement building, which served as extremely high density housing from the time it was built in 1863 until it was shuttered in 1935 for not meeting building codes (codes requiring un-reasonable things like heat and toilets).  As with the synagogue down the street, the building was a near ruin by the time it was discovered in 1988, but, as it had been uninhabited for 50 years, the building had never been restored and was still in largely original condition, which was exactly what the museum founders were looking for. 

The museum is only seen via guided tours, with each tour telling the story of the actual families who lived in the building and showing their apartments.  An estimated 7000 people lived in this building between 1863 and 1935; the museum has identified 1,300 of them and focuses on just a few families.  You learn about their day-to-day lives: what they did for a living, what they did for fun, their tragedies (like the deaths of their children) and their triumphs (like starting a successful business).  Every fact has been meticulously tracked down from public records (births, deaths, census and tax records), neighbors and descendants.  The museum has also done thorough dissections of the walls and floors in order to restore the original look of the apartments, and the appropriate furnishings were determined from floor marks, living descendants and crime scene photographs.  Every piece of every apartment was meticulously researched, from soap to sofas, and it definitely feels authentic.

Jane Moore, daughter of James and Bridget

We’ve visited the museum twice now and taken two tours: The Moores (an Irish-Catholic family) and Getting By (German-Jewish and Irish-Catholic families), and they covered different parts of the building and had very different stories.  To me, the Moores had the most impact.  This tour focused on people fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, covering the childhood of Bridget Meehan during the famine, the price of her escape and her new life in 19th century New York married to Joseph Moore.  We heard the details about the horrors of the public outhouse (only 4 toilets for the entire building including the bar downstairs), sanitation levels in the neighborhood (garbage and rats everywhere), and the scandalous milk scam that took the life of at least one of Bridget’s children.  It really brought home what early immigrants were up against, and the miracle that many members of the Moore family not only survived but thrived.  Even though Bridget herself died at the early age of 36, her descendants are alive and well in NYC and elsewhere.

RATING: Tenement Museum 

Pauline: 7 out of 10.  Interesting and accurate history, but tours can be inconsistent.

Paul: 8 out of 10.  Excellent preservation of a part of New York's history that should never be forgotten.

NOTES ON VISITING THE TENEMENT MUSEUM:

The Tenement Museum is one of New York’s newest museums, and has received a ton of attention from the local press.  This museum has been touted as a new kind of museum, one devoted to the contributions of the common man instead of the wealthy.  Hence this museum is very popular, and we ran into dense crowds on our weekend visit.  Also, the museum is not well organized and we’d advise a little preparation work before your visit. 

Despite the sign, this is not the entrance.

The first problem is finding the museum entrance, which is actually in an unlabeled gift shop across the street from the museum’s address.  Once you enter the shop you’ll see a counter with a crowd milling about in front and a chalkboard behind.  Names are written on the chalkboard, with times and check marks underneath.  After you elbow your way to the counter, you’ll need to get today’s handout, which lists the tours available.  These tours have the names of families covered by each tour.  Each tour covers only one or two apartments, and no tour covers the entire building.  Compare the handout with the chalkboard to determine what is sold out.  We recommend cruising the tours listed on the museum’s website ahead of time to determine which you want to go on.  With an admission price of $20, the Tenement Museum is one of NYC’s most expensive museums, so make sure you pick a tour that interests you.  If you’re really organized, you can purchase in advance and skip the crowds.

Proceed with some caution: the Tenement Museum has worked hard to restore six apartments, but the building is still a work in progress.  Most floors have construction zones, and other areas have been left deliberately un-restored to show the original condition of the building.  You’ll see holes in the walls, exposed plumbing and hanging wires on every tour.  Additionally, due to the fact that this building was built before most building codes, it’s a rough place to walk.  Stairs are step and narrow, hallways are dark, floors are uneven, and rooms are very small.  The museum is not handicapped accessible, and if you prefer not to navigate the stairs and cramped quarters, the museum also gives several good walking tours of the neighborhood.

Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art / Alice Austin House

Alice Austen, Auntie Minn and Oswald Müller. 1884, by Alice Austen

8/15/2010, Sunday

MUSEUMS:

Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art …...… 0.5 hr

Alice Austen House ……………………………...… 0.5 hr

COST:

Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art …....… $5 each

Alice Austen House ……………………………….... $2 each

In our museum travels, we’ve seen quite a number of historic buildings made into museums, and we’ve begun to realize that these types of museum fall into two distinct categories: 1) buildings preserved for their historical significance, like being the setting of an important event, or 2) buildings associated with a notable/notorious person.  These two types have different styles of exhibits and tours and end up being very different experiences.  In most of NYC, the second category is far more rare than the first, but not in Staten Island. 

Throughout its history Staten Island has been legendary (perhaps infamous) for its resident odd balls, characters and misfits.  A surprising number of artists, actors, poets, inventors and revolutionaries have lived on the island, often seeking refuge from Manhattan and the world.  As an example, two notorious revolutionaries lived here during their periods of exile: Mexican President Santa Anna, and the Italian freedom fighter Giuseppe Garibaldi.  There is a bizarre rumor that Santa Ana was critical in the invention of chewing gum on Staten Island, as he imported chicle, the base of chewing gum, to replace rubber in carriage tires. 

Gum isn’t the only innovation connected to Staten Island.  Charles Goodyear (rubber vulcanization) and Antonio Mecci (possibly the first inventor of the telephone) both worked on their inventions here, and Mary Ewing Outerbridge built the first tennis court in the US on Staten Island (it caught on quick).  The island has been home to a number of extremely odd musicians, from Gene Simons (of Kiss) to Lady Gaga, and the writers who have lived here are legion, ranging from the poet Langston Hughes to the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon.

With so many creative characters on the island, it’s not surprising that four of Staten Island’s historic buildings memorialize a few of it’s odder residents: spiritualist Jacques Marchais, turn of the century photographer Alice Austen, maritime artist John A. Noble, controversial inventor Antonio Mecci and his unlikely roommate the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Girabaldi.  

Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art

While all of these people certainly had their quirks, to us the strangest of these museums was the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art.  Jacques Marchais (born Edna Coblenz, 1887-1948) was an actress from Ohio who, for reasons known only to her, became fascinated with Tibetan art, architecture and Buddhism.  She never visited Tibet and didn't consider herself a Buddhist, but she was a charismatic member of a group of New York spiritualists in the early 1900’s and is credited for being one of the people who popularized Buddhism in American. 

Jacques Marchais

Jacques Marchais owned a Tibetan art gallery in Manhattan and eventually amassed a personal collection of over 3000 pieces, once the largest collection of Tibetan art in the United States.  Toward the end of her life, she built a meditation center and retreat in the hills of Staten Island, designing it and the surrounding gardens to resemble pictures she’d seen of Tibetan monasteries.  This historic building was the first Himalayan-style architecture in the United States and is now a museum, with meditation cells and a series of small gardens arranged in steps down a leafy, terraced slope.  

Sadly, the collection has shrunk since Marchais’s death.  The museum passed through a number of hands and many pieces were lost, sold off and possibly stolen.  However, today the museum is in better care and runs an active events program.  During our visit they were setting up for a Tibetan cooking demonstration.  Two rooms of the house are open for viewing: the library and the "Temple Room,” with a three-tiered mica altar.  While the collection is smaller than in Marchais’s day, exhibits still include a number of valuable and interesting pieces of Tibetan art, including ritual knives, alter sets, furniture, textiles and lots of bronze deities.  The museum also hosts the occasional modern displays.  Paul particularly enjoyed a colorful photography exhibit showcasing the current people of Tibet.

To Paul and me, the Tibetan art at the Jacques Marchais Museum was similar to what we had seen at the Rubin Museum (the large Tibetan art museum in Manhattan), and, unfortunately, we encountered the same problems that we had had at the Rubin.  Namely, that the objects were presented with very little explanation.  As we have no background in Buddhism or Tibetan art, we were left with a lot of questions.  We also wanted more information about Jacques Marchais herself, an intriguing woman who lived life on her own terms, inspiring others with an ancient religion and culture that she had no connection with, other than her own curiosity and imagination.

Alice Austen House

Another fascinating Staten Island woman was the subject of the next museum, the Alice Austen House.  Alice Austen (1866 -1952) was an early photographer at a time when images were captured with huge box cameras, glass plates and hand-mixed chemicals.  Austen started taking pictures at the age of 10, her first camera an exotic gift from a world-traveling uncle.  Photography soon became a big part of her life and she took a camera nearly everywhere she went, taking thousands of photographs and capturing a large slice of the life of a Victorian age New York socialite at home and at play.  

Alice and Girlfriends, by Alice Austen

New York street scene, Alice Austen

Alice Austen was active and athletic, and her pictures show Austen, her family and her close group of friends at island events, the beach, playing tennis, biking around the island and traveling around the U.S.  Austen also developed an early photojournalistic style, documenting New York City street life, and taking extensive pictures of the labs at the immigrant Quarantine Station on Staten Island. 

Trude and I, masked, short skirts by Alice Austen

There’s no doubt that Alice Austen was a highly skilled photographer.  However, she is known for reasons beyond her artistic talent.  There is a lot of evidence indicating that she was a lesbian who lived life fairly far out of the closet, during a time when that was rare, to say the least.  Austen was part of a close-nit group of woman who did not associate with men, called "The Darns" (short for "darn those women who won't date men”) and some of her photographs of this group are highly suggestive, showing women partially undressed or cross-dressed as men.  Austen lived with a woman, Gertrude Tate, for fifty-five years. 

Julia Martin, Julia Bredt and Self Dressed Up as Men, Alice Austen

Thus the evidence of Alice Austen’s sexuality seems pretty clear, and the several groups of women in buzz cuts walking around the museum probably had strong opinions on the matter.  Alice Austen is held up in the lesbian community as an example of a well-documented lesbian life and artist at the turn of the century.  You’ll find her more gender-bending photography on a lot of gay and lesbian art sites on the web.  However, what you won’t find is any mention of her sexuality at the museum.  The museum does not show any of her suggestive photography and refuses access to any investigation of her sexuality.  This alleged cover up has been the subject of more than one documentary.

Alice Austen House

The Alice Austen House museum is in the house that Austen lived in most of her life, perched in a small park on the shore of Staten Island, with a glorious view of the entrance to NY harbor and all of its shipping traffic.  The house is well restored, with Victorian furnishings and an antique camera; however, on the whole, we were disappointed in the museum.  Thousands of Austen’s photographs survive, but only a handful were exhibited, and there was no tour and very little information on her life at all, with or without the lesbian question.  We found more information on a modern photography exhibit in the house than we did on Alice Austen.  (For the record, the modern photography was about distorted body images, and both Paul and I thought it was pretty cool.)  However, it seemed as if the museum, in an effort to remove any question of Austen's sexuality, had also removed most of her art and all of her personality, reducing it to just a small historic house.  

Miss E. Alice Austen, 1888 by Captain Oswald Müller

In summary, both Paul and I think that historical houses that focus on people, not events, are the best kinds of historical houses.  Instead of being caught in amber, these houses feel more active and seem to connect with the present.  It's no surprise to us that both of these museums had modern exhibits mixed in with historical ones.  However, at both the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art and the Alice Austen House we would have liked more information about the art exhibited and the fascinating people featured, and a good tour would really help both of these museums.  Despite this, we enjoyed the insight into Staten Island’s creative, odd-ball heritage at both of these museums, and loved the fact that the island works hard to preserve the memories of its more unusual residents, even if conservative museum boards don’t always approve of their lifestyles. 

Images in this post, from the top: Alice Austen, Auntie Minn and Oswald Müller. 1884, by Alice Austen; exterior of Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art; portrait of Jacques Marchais; two statues at the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art; exterior of the Alice Austen House; Alice and Girlfriends, by Alice Austen; New York scene by Alice Austen; Trude and I, masked, short skirts, by Alice Austen; Julia Martin, Julia Bredt and Self Dressed Up as Men, 1891 by Alice Austen; interior of the Alice Austen House; Miss E. Alice Austen at 22, 1888 by Captain Oswald Müller.

Historic Richmond Town / Conference House

Christopher House c. 1720, part of Historic Richmond Town

8/15/2010

Sunday

MUSEUMS:

Historic Richmond Town ………………….….….1.5 hr

Conference House …………………………….… 1.25 hr

COST:

Historic Richmond Town ………………….….…. $5

Conference House …………………………….… $3

 

I’ve a confession to make.  Before I moved here, I thought New York City and Manhattan were the same thing.  Sure I’d heard of Brooklyn and the Bronx from TV and movies, but I didn’t realize that they were all part of the same city.  So, for all readers unfamiliar with the area, New York City is divided into 5 different parts called “boroughs”: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Staten Island.  Each of the boroughs is huge, ranging in population from 0.5 million to 2.5 million, and each has its own distinct personality and characteristics.  In any other part of the world they’d be cities in their own right. 

Ranking the boroughs can be controversial around here, but most people (who are not in Brooklyn) agree on the best and the worst.  Manhattan is generally considered the greatest borough.  It’s home to NYC’s most famous industries (banking, Broadway theater and the NY Stock Exchange), its wealthiest residents (Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Roosevelts, etc), and a majestic skyline recognizable around the world.  Not surprisingly, it also has the most museums (110).  The least is Staten Island, known for the Staten Island ferry, the world’s largest landfill and not much else.

Map of Staten Island; from Historic Richmond Town

Despite Staten Island’s under appreciated status, it has its share of museums: 11 by our count, which puts it on our list for a visit.  However, Staten Island is the furthest borough from our home; it takes 3 hours and about $20 in tolls for us to get there.  To save us driving time, Paul and I booked a bed and breakfast and planned a 3-day weekend to see all 11 museums in one trip.  To us this sounded like a romantic weekend adventure, but we were widely ridiculed by the locals.  Around here, saying you’re going on a weekend trip to Staten Island seems to be roughly the equivalent of saying you’re vacationing in South Central Los Angeles.  Most New Yorkers don’t have much affection for Staten Island and seem to think it contains only polluted landfill and crumbling suburban sprawl.  One local called it “New Jersey without the charm.”

Paul and I saw the landfill (it’s closed, but hard to miss) and suburban sprawl on our trip, but we also visited some fun museums, walked in lovely parks and ate at great restaurants, including one of NYC’s best pizza parlors (Denino’s).  Despite all the warnings and odd looks from our friends, we ended up having a great time and it was a remarkably inexpensive vacation (particularly by NYC standards).  Regrettably, on our last day Paul was called back for a work-related emergency, but we did see 8 of Staten Island’s 11 museums.  We’re looking forward to our return trip (and another visit to Denino’s, yum).

Staten Island's 3rd County Courthouse (1837) part of Historic Richmond Town

Staten Island has had an active historical society since 1856, and their activities have preserved a number of older buildings through several construction booms.  Thus, it’s not surprising that the largest museum on Staten Island is a collection of historic buildings: Historic Richmond Town.  Richmond Town was a small town in the center of the island, originally settled by the Dutch in the 1600’s.  After passing into British hands, Richmond Town became the county seat, with the island’s first courthouse and jail.  The town withered after the court moved to St. George, but much of it was preserved as a historic village in the 1950’s.  After the Veranzono Bridge opened in 1964, linking Staten Island to the rest of NYC, a huge construction boom changed the face of the island, and many historic homes facing demolition were moved to this site.  Now, Historic Richmond Town is a “living history village and museum complex,” occupying almost 50 acres and containing 30 historical buildings from all over the island.

Staten Island Historical Museum

This sounds like a bigger deal than it is.  In reality, only a few buildings are restored, and visitors are only allowed into those that are on the guided tour or occupied by a docent that day.  Paul and I saw only 5 buildings during our visit.  We started in the Staten Island Historical Museum, housed in the former County Clerk's Office and exhibiting a nice collection of artifacts from Staten Island’s historical industries (fishing and textiles), housewares and folk art.  The tour started there and moved to the oldest house in the complex; Voorlezer's House c.1695.  The house was built by the Dutch Reformed Congregation and served as a church, school, and residence for the Voorlezer (lay minister and teacher).  It’s the oldest schoolhouse in the nation, and a national landmark. 

Voorlezer House c 1695, part of Historic Richmond Town

The tour guide painted an interesting picture of the Spartan life of the first settlers, particularly of the minister/teacher, whose tiny 2 room residence was also the church, school and meeting house (and we think current NY apartments are small and lack privacy).  Apparently, it was a mark of great prosperity for a town to be able to house a minister, even under these poor conditions, but they couldn't afford him for long and he left in 1701.  Next door was the Boehm House (c.1750), which was not fully restored but the exposed timbers and plaster were used as an exhibit on early building techniques.  We also saw Staten Island’s third courthouse.  (The first burned down; the second was destroyed by the British army.) 

Staten Island Historical Museum

All in all, while Paul and I enjoyed the glimpse into the lives of the area’s early settlers, we were a bit disappointed in Historic Richmond Town.  We expected more demonstrations, stories and interaction in a “living history” museum, and overall the museum seemed a bit unkempt and under funded.  However, Paul admired their dedication in saving so many pieces of Staten Island’s history with little to no budget.  Also, we should note that the museum does have demonstrations and events on its calendar, so perhaps it would be better to come on a day when something is scheduled. 

Conference House c 1680

We visited another historical Staten Island house today.  Called the Conference House, it’s was built c. 1680 by Captain Christopher Billopp, the Collector of Customs for Delaware.  The house was home to a loyalist family and served as a headquarters for the British Army during the Revolutionary War, but it is best known for being the site of a famous peace conference.  On September 11, 1776, the newly formed Continental Congress sent John Adams, Edward Rutledge, and Benjamin Franklin to met with the King’s representative and commander of the British forces, Lord Richard Howe, at this home in an attempt to stop hostilities at the beginning of the American Revolutionary War.

Beach at the Conference House

The conference was a failure of course; the British would not consider independence and the congressional representatives had been authorized only to negotiate independence.  Thus, war was decided to be inevitable.  Four days later the British occupied New York City and the city would remain in British hands for most the War.  Every year on September 11th, the Conference House holds a popular reenactment of the conference, complete with boats, period costumes and an ersatz Ben Franklin.

In summary, the Conference House is beautifully restored and has a well researched and detailed tour, but I thought the best part of the museum was the surrounding park.  It has 267 acres of coastal forest and seashore overlooking a picturesque bay, with broad well maintained walking paths.  Paul and I walked down the beach a ways to see the “South Pole,” a large red pole marking the southern tip of New York State.  We were both highly amused and thought that only in New York would they think to celebrate something so innocuous.

"South Pole," at the southern most point of New York State

Images in this post, from the top: Christopher House c.1720, at Historic Richmond town, relocated from Willowbrook.  This fieldstone farmhouse was the home of Joseph Christopher, a member of the Richmond County Committee of Safety prior to the Revolution.  Map of Staten Island from the Staten Island Historical Museum, at Historic Richmond Town. The 3rd County Courthouse c. 1837, at Historic Richmond Town. Preceded by two smaller courthouses, this Greek Revival structure was Staten Island's first monumental county building. It served as the Richmond County Courthouse until 1919.  Rocking Horse from the children's toys exhibit at the Staten Island Historical Museum, at Historic Richmond Town.  Voorlezer's House c.1695, at Historic Richmond Town.  This structure was built by the Dutch Reformed Congregation and served as a church, school, and residence for the Voorlezer (lay minister and teacher) until 1701.  It was used as a private home and store until 1936.  This building is a National Historic Landmark.  Painted Wooden Statue of a Saint, Staten Island Historical Museum, at Historic Richmond Town.  The Conference House (formerly known at the Billopp House),  a two-story, rubble stone masonry building constructed circa 1680 by Captain Christopher Billopp.  Beach in front of the Conference House.  The South Pole, placed at the southern most tip of New York State.