Across the street from where Lucille Armstrong bought a home for her traveling husband Louis Daniel Armstrong is a 14,000 square-foot building, the “largest archive for an African-American musician.” The new center will present music, fun, and education to preserve Armstrong’s legacy curated by pianist Jason Moran as the “Here to Stay” exhibition to show off Satchmo’s five-decade career. Now open to the public, the Louis Armstrong Center will draw on the 60,000-piece collection organized in 1991 by Michael Cogswell at Queens College’s Rosenthal Library and recently moved here by Archivist Ricky Riccardi.
The vision of wife Lucille Armstrong, aided by her friend Phoebe Jacobs, inspired local Queens College and political leaders to enable a private residential house to become a National Landmark and Museum. Regina Bain, as Executive Director, pledged “to bring the Armstrong’s unique archives alive through new interactive events.”
On June 29, 2023, dignitaries gathered on Corona’s 107th Street before a proscenium stage backed by a huge photo of a smiling Satchmo. From the balconies of both buildings trumpeters Bria Skonberg, Jon Faddis, Frank Greene, Bruce Harris, Riley Mulherkar, Linda Briceno, Steven Bernstein, Summer Camargo, Kali Rodriguez, Tatum Greenblatt, Danny Jonokuchi and Dave Adewumi all blew “West End Blues” to applause from the cognoscenti-filled
