Historic Richmond Town

Richmond
Staten Island

Readers may have noticed that I include a lot of Staten Island museums and cultural institutions in this blog. This is because Staten Island is just about the last place the average New Yorker or tourist thinks about visiting. It requires a subway to the bottom of Manhattan and then a ferry and then a bus. Not exactly an easy day’s outing. But think of the ferry ride like a free mini-cruise and things don’t seem so bad. One thing State Island really has going for it is that it is relatively uncrowded and peaceful, which makes it a nice destination for a day-trip. However, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has just announced plans to build the world’s largest ferris wheel and a 100-store mall (both slated to open in 2015) in order to attract more visitors to the often-ignored borough. Which means peace-loving tourists best get to the island while it’s still quiet.

Historic Richmond Town is one of Staten Island’s better-known destinations, and it is particularly popular with local families and school groups, so beware of strollers and groups of roaming children. It also has almost thirty original (not rebuilt or renovated—though some have been moved from their original location) structures ranging from the 1695 to 1907. It is strongly recommended that visitors who do not wish to take a guided tour inevitably filled with families print out their own map at home. The visitor’s center at Richmond Town is fiercely protective of their maps and give them only to those who pay for a tour. Because the Town is an open space, it is easy to wander through the area for free, but along with the tour, the admission price also grants access to the Historical Museum that houses rotating exhibitions.

The town of Richmond became the center of government in Richmond County in the early 1700s and a Greek Revival style courthouse was built in the then-prominent town in 1837. At the end of the 19^th century, however, Staten Island became a borough of New York City and government shifted to St. George, the port area closest to Manhattan. The idea of preserving the area developed during the Great Depression of the 1930s and in the 1950s the Staten Island Historical Society signed a contract with NYC to maintain and develop Historic Richmond Town as a museum village.

 

Along with gorgeous buildings with styles ranging from Dutch Colonial to Gothic Revival, Richmond Town boasts one of my personal favorite features of some educational sites: craftspeople dressed in historic costume working with period equipment and vintage tools. Visitors will encounter blacksmiths, woodworkers, shop owners, butter churners, weavers, carpenters, and basket makers. I always get very disappointed when the period interpreters break out of character. It’s one thing to eliminate the fourth wall but ruining the illusion completely is another. Period guides need to take notes from the Lower East Side Tenement Museum—those people never break character. 

The information provided by the map is a bit sparse, and as I avoided the tour I cannot speak to the sort of inside stories and juicy bits of gossip that it does or does not include. I can, however, recommend visitors not to miss a few of the outlying buildings in the village that are some of the nicest gems in Richmond Town. Christopher House (1720) is a beautiful fieldstone farmhouse that is hidden down a path behind Voorlezer’s House (1695) on Arthur Kill Road. Public School 28 (1907) beyond the parking lot is built in the Arts and Craft style and was the first elementary school in Staten Island. Also easy to miss are the Rezeau-Van Pelt Family Cemetery near the Courthouse and the 1860s outhouse near the Carpenter Shop. The map says absolutely nothing about a large millstone and anchor located at the site of the now-destroyed second county courthouse. There is, however, a lovely mill along the nearby river stream.

Depending on how you like to pace things and what sort of events are going on (there are tavern concerts every Saturday and plenty of workshops and demonstrations) you could easily spend an entire day at Historic Richmond Town. Or, if that’s a bit much for you, visit the Town in the morning and then brave the uphill climb to the nearby Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art.

www.historicrichmondtown.org

Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art

Lighthouse Hill
Staten Island

Staten Island is the red-headed step-child of NYC boroughs. Most people “visit” the island as a means to get a good view of the Statue of Liberty for free. Few ever leave the boat terminal and most return back to Manhattan on the next ferry. But Staten Island does have a few sites worth venturing inland for. The best known is likely Snug Harbor Cultural Center which contains the 80-acre Staten Island Botanical Garden and Chinese Scholar’s Garden. Much less known is the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art. 

The Museum was founded in 1945 by Jacqueline Coblentz Klauber, a woman who ran an Upper East Side art gallery under the masculine pseudonym Jacques Marchais. Klauber’s great-grandfather traveled to the Orient several times as a tea merchant and brought back Tibetan figures which she played with as a child. This sparked a lifelong interest in all things Tibet despite the fact she herself never traveled to the region. 

Klauber collected and sold Tibetan, Indian, and Himalayan art at a time when only a few museums were beginning to collect Asian art. Over her lifetime she amassed a collection of over one thousand objects, including sculpture, musical instruments, and scroll paintings. She also formed a library of over 2000 books related to Tibetan art. The average viewer will be impressed by the collection, but in actuality most of the items are of middling quality. Far finer objects can be found at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The collection is also poorly displayed—everything is jammed into two dimly-lit rooms decorated with Oriental tapestries.

The building and grounds, however, are lovely. Klauber designed the site herself based on the Potola at Lhasa, the Himalayan monastery that is the historic seat of the Dalai Lamas. The flat-roofed building features pagoda-style windows and is made from natural fieldstone. The buildings are surrounded by a Samadhi Garden, a terraced garden with gold fish and lotus ponds meant to inspire concentration and meditation.

The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art is not the easiest place to get to, particularly if one is traveling on foot. It is located on the top of Lighthouse Avenue, which makes for splendid views, but a rather dangerous uphill climb on narrow, winding roads without sidewalks. On the plus side, you do get a regular view of the Staten Island Range Lighthouse during the trek to and from the Museum. It seems a bit silly to have a lighthouse so far inland, but then it also seems silly to have a museum of Tibetan art that is so hard to access. Unless it’s meant to be a metaphor for the difficult-to-access region of Tibet itself. In that case, the location is perfect.

The Museum of Tibetan Art isn’t too far from Historic Richmond Town (review to follow), and the two can easily be combined into a daytrip. Lighthouse enthusiasts can also figure out how to make it through the winding roads to the Range Lighthouse, but the lighthouse is not open to visitors. I advise against going to see only the Museum of Tibetan Art. While the location is picturesque, admission is cheap, and you’re likely to have the place completely to yourself, it’s not enough to warrant its own foray into Staten Island. 

www.tibetanmuseum.org

Louis Armstrong House Museum

Corona
Queens

The Louis Armstrong House Museum is not a destination for the casual NYC visitor. It’s location almost at the end of the subway system—that part of Queens that is almost Long Island—makes it a location for either locals or the most die-hard jazz fans. If you have half a day and want to see one of the city’s quieter gems, the Armstrong House is a wonderful little spot. And, as it is definitely one of New York’s lesser-known museums, you’re likely to have a semi-private tour. When I went with two friends on a Saturday afternoon (prime time for museum traffic), there were a grand total of seven people in the group, which was good because Satchmo’s house is small! If you go on a weekday, the group sizes could include just you and the guide. 

 As with Rockefeller’s Kykuit (reviewed in August), the only way to tour the Armstrong House is with a docent. The House’s modest Japanese-inspired gardens are open to the public for free, and of course anyone can see the unassuming brick façade from the street, but this is one tour well-worth taking. The interior is just lovely and the docents are so excited about Louis Armstrong (though there seems to be some confusion as whether to pronounce Louis’s name “Luis” or “Lewey,” it seems he went by both) that even if you don’t like jazz, by the end of the tour you’ll be convinced that Louis was the best thing since sliced bread, the cat’s pajamas, and the bee’s knees all rolled into one.

The tour begins with a short video in the Museum’s tiny permanent exhibition space. This small room is filled with some pretty amazing items, like Armstrong’s blue silk pajamas, a gold-plated Selmer trumpet given to him in 1934 by King George V with the words “The property of Louis Armstrong” inscribed on the bell pipe, and a portrait of Armstrong painted by Tony Bennett. Bennett actually painted two portraits on Louis Armstrong. The first was painted in 1970 as gift to Armstrong (upon receiving it Louis exclaimed, “Man, you out-Rembrandted Rembrandt!”) and hangs permanently in the Museum. The second was painted in 2012 and auctioned to raise money for the Museum.

Be sure to ask your guide plenty of questions: that’s where all the really good information is. For example, the video mentions Armstrong’s four wives, but fails the mention that his first wife was a prostitute who worked for Louis when he tried a brief stint as a pimp when he was 18, or that his third wife was a gold digger. One of the women on the tour had recently gone through a break-up and felt it was somehow fitting that Louis got a comeuppance for leaving his second wife for a flashy woman who turned out to be after his money. The home, however, was bought in 1943 by his final wife, Lucille, after touring with him for a year and realizing she did not want a life on the road. It was Lucille who left the building to the city in her will. It had already been declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976, but it didn’t open to the public until 2003, some twenty years after Lucille’s death.

If you have time before or after the tour, be sure to read a few pages of one of Armstrong’s handwritten manuscripts on display in the exhibition space—he jokes about his loud, yappy dogs and expounds upon the virtues of laxatives. One of his quirks was his love of Swiss Kriss herbal laxative. He extolled its virtues and handed out packets of it to whoever he could, including members of the British Royal Family when dining with them after giving a private performance. Armstrong also performed for at least two popes, though it is unknown if he offered them any Swiss Kriss! As joke gifts for friends, he even printed out cards of him sitting on a toilet (as seen through a keyhole) with slogan, “Satch says, ‘Leave it all behind ya!’ ” 

While small, the House is warm and tastefully decorated with items Louis picked up during his international travels, especially during his trips to Asia. The only real bit of flash is the downstairs bathroom, which Armstrong insisted in decorating with wall-to-wall mirrors and a marble sink with gold-plated handles. The upstairs bathroom is calmer, though it does have speakers in the walls so Armstrong could enjoy music during the extended periods of time he spent there. He enjoyed technology and his upstairs studio is filled with sound equipment. Several buttons in the home play clips of some of Armstrong’s recordings; he was known to record casual conversations and dinner parties as well as political speeches from the radio and television. The most beautiful room is the kitchen, which is filled with blue-lacquered cupboards and cabinets. As the Armstrongs enjoyed entertaining, the kitchen has two ovens and built-in electric gadgets like blender, mixer, and can opener. 

The tour and home are interesting enough that even visitors who don’t know anything about Louis Armstrong or jazz will enjoy themselves, so don’t feel bad about dragging along a friend or wife who is little-inclined to take a long subway ride. Tours are given every hour on the hour. A visitor’s center across the street has been in the works since the Armstrong House opened in 2003, but construction on it hasn’t even begun. It will likely bring in more visitors, so take advantage of this sleepy little location while you can.

http://www.louisarmstronghouse.org/

Union Church of Pocantico Hills

Sleepy Hollow, NY

Hudson River Valley

I have always found churches fascinating. Partially for their architecture and partially for what they represent. When I was a child I loved going to church with my grandparents on Sundays. Because of this, even though I am not a religious person, I still associate churches, and all places of worship, with feelings of warmth. I take umbrage with most organized religion, but not their buildings. It doesn’t matter if it’s an intricate golden Byzantine mosaic cathedral or white Dutch colonial parish church with straight, clean lines; I still adore going to churches, albeit for different reasons now than then.

The Union Church of Pocantico Hills is an unassuming little gem a stone’s throw from Kykuit, the Rockefeller Estate, in Sleepy Hollow, and it makes sense to combine visiting the two sites on the same day. However, forget about trying to walk to it after visiting Kykuit, or walking to Kykuit after visiting the Church—the only way in and out of Kykuit is on a bus and they will not let visitors out anywhere than the parking lot. I used all my charm pleading to be dropped off on the road to no avail, and after three hours of walking around Kykuit, a three-mile uphill hike to the Union Church did not sound appetizing. Fortunately, Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow possess an unusually large number of taxi services for such small towns. And the drivers are the sort of people you thought existed only in movies and on television: salt-of-the-earth retired opticians who tell random stories about snapping girls’ bras in the fifth grade and say it’s a shame you didn’t get lunch at the Japanese restaurant because the food there is real good.

The Union Church was built in 1921 by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., as part of his plans to develop the town of Pocantico Hills near his family’s estate. Even though the Rockefellers were devout Baptists, the Union Church was designed to be non-denominational and open to Christians of all faiths. The Church itself is a simple, one-story, vaguely neo-Gothic structure with brown fieldstone walls and a steep gable. What makes the Union Church so special, however, is its stained-glass windows. 

When Rockefeller, Jr.’s wife, Abby, died in 1948, their son Nelson—who inherited his mother’s love of Modern art—commissioned Henri Matisse to redesign the Church’s rose window in her honor. Matisse initially refused the commission; he was eighty years old and wheelchair bound and felt he would not be able to do the window justice. Nelson Rockefeller persisted and eventually got his way (as the Rockefellers are wont to do). The Matisse rose window is a small circle with even, curving petal traceries. Surrounding the petals are organic leaf designs. The designs within each petal and leaf are unique with no shape being repeated within the original tracery. Matisse labored over the window for years and finally finished the piece in 1954. He died of a heart attack a few weeks later and because the maquette was on the wall of his bedroom where he died, it is believed that the Union Church rose window may have been his last work.

When John D. Rockefeller, Jr., died in 1960, his son David spearheaded a campaign to have Marc Chagall design a large stained-glass window in his honor. Abby Rockefeller had been a collector of Chagall’s work and had entertained him at Kykuit, but it wasn’t until the windows he designed for the synagogue of Hebrew University’s Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art that the rest of the Rockefeller children were convinced he was the right artist for the job. Chagall designed the large Good Samaritan window in 1963, and the commission expanded to include all eight of the nave windows. 

Things weren’t always easy-going, however. After designing the Good Samaritan window in honor of Rockefeller, Jr., Chagall was asked to create a window to memorialize Michael Rockefeller, Nelson’s youngest son who had disappeared during an ethnographic expedition to New Guinea when he was only twenty-two years old. The family didn’t think Chagall’s first design captured Michael’s spirit and had him redo it. The first window for Michael is the only nave window relegated to artificial lighting (it’s a faux window that was added to the nave in order to accommodate the glass), while the second design, which was well-received, has the place of honor next to the Good Samaritan window. Other windows commemorate various other Rockefellers. Chagall designed his stained-glass to incorporate the green and orange of the Matisse window. The nave windows closest to the rose window are filled with hints of Matisse’s palette; they take on more hues of blue as they progress down the line, eventually exploding into the resplendent azure Good Samaritan window at the back.

The Union Church of Pocantico Hills is such a small little spot that it’s worth taking the twenty-minute tour provided by one of the sweet women who work there. Indeed, the chapel is so small that if anyone else is on a tour, you can’t help but listen in even if you hadn’t intended on it. The guides are especially useful for visitors who didn’t go to Sunday school as a child; the Matisse rose window is readily accessible to all viewers, but the Chagall windows illustrate specific Old and New Testament stories.

Even the most ardent church or Matisse/Chagall connoisseur will be hard-pressed to spend more than an hour at the Union Church—most visitors are in and out in twenty minutes—so it’s not the sort of destination that warrants its very own outing. There are, however, plenty of other interesting historical sites in the area to combine into a day or even an entire weekend trip. If you don’t have a car, however, be sure to bring the numbers of a few local taxi services—there’s no hailing of these cabs. And all but the most ardent of cyclists beware: the Union Church is located near the very top of Pocantico Hills.

https://www.hudsonvalley.org/node/429