Satchmo's spirit, wife's flair, harmonize in Queens

NEW YORK -- If you stand in the dining room of Louis Armstrong's house, you can hear America's most famous jazz musician as he dines with friends: "Who was it that asked me if Brussels sprouts was raised in Brussels? They are miniature cabbages," he says, then lets out a mischievous, gravelly laugh.

His recorded voice is controlled by sleight of hand, courtesy of a young tour guide who jumpstarts the tape by waving his hand over a hidden panel. An obsessive diarist, Armstrong spent years recording everyday conversations at home and on the road with his band. Those recordings add to the authenticity of the home plunked in a modest neighborhood in the Corona section of Queens and turned into a museum, the Louis Armstrong Home, last October after a $1.6 million restoration. Known by his nickname "Satchmo," Armstrong, who was a prolific writer, lived in the home for 28 years with his fourth wife, Lucille. They had no children and Armstrong died there in 1971 at age 71, but his spirit lives on in every inch of the house.

From the balcony where Armstrong played the trumpet for the neighborhood children to the turquoise kitchen; the shagadelic guestroom to the master bedroom where he died, the brick house built in 1902 is much like it was when Armstrong lived there and when Lucille died in 1983 at age 69. Decorated with wild wallpaper, chandeliers, portraits of the Armstrongs, and custom-made furnishings, the home is a reflection of Lucille's taste, which was high and, some may even say, a bit garish, but it wasn't boring.

A former dancer who met Armstrong in the famous Cotton Club, Lucille purchased the 2,800-square-foot house for $3,500 in 1943 from an Irish family, recalled Selma Heraldo, the couple's neighbor. Back then, the neighborhood was mostly Irish, German, and Italian, but it's now largely Latino. While her husband was on the road, Lucille purchased the house without Armstrong's seeing it. He describes in his memoirs the morning when he first saw the home, arriving in a taxi from a long trip. "One look at that big fine house and right away I said to the driver, `Aw man, quit kidding and take me to the address I am looking for. . . . Anyway, I get up enough courage to get out of the cab and ring the bell. And sure enough the door opened and who stood in the doorway with a real thin silk nightgown -- hair in curlers. To me she looked like my favorite flower -- a red rose."

The small, red-brick, two-story home with a garden in the back may not look special on the outside but the inside is grand. Visitors walk in the home from the front door and enter the parlor decorated with seagrass wall paper. Patrick Canela, the 14-year-old tour guide who lives in the neighborhood, explains that 90 percent of the walls, even the closets, are covered in wallpaper. The main bathroom is mirrored and filled with gold-plated fixtures. The bright blue, 1960s kitchen is fitted with a high-end refrigerator and a six-burner stove with double oven. Upstairs, the walls of the grand bedroom -- where the couple's favorite toiletries (for him: Lanvin for men, Bal a Versailles by Jean Desprez, and Canoe cologne for men; for her: Jolie Madame perfume) still sit on the dresser -- and the dressing room are lined with shiny silver wallpaper.

Only Armstrong's den is wood paneled. The centerpiece is a mahogany desk where he wrote and spent hours listening to records on the turntable and taped conversations on the reel-to-reel tape machine that still sits in a cabinet.

The house, which is open every day but Monday, is owned by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Queens College is the caretaker of the home's treasures, including 5,000 photographs, 85 scrapbooks, 650 home recording tapes, 120 gold records and awards, and five gold-plated trumpets. Michael Cogswell, director of the house and archives, was hired in 1991 to inventory the home; for three years he catalogued 72 shipping cartons of Armstrong's belongings that now reside at the school, whose archives are open to the public.

"It was in Lucille's will that the house be given to the City of New York to be operated as a memorial to her husband," Cogswell said.

Heraldo said Armstrong never wanted to leave the neighborhood, even though he was wealthy and famous, though his wife got the itch.

Lucille "had a girlfriend and they decided to go on to Long Island and look at some fabulous houses," recalled Heraldo, "They came back and told Louis. Louis says to the wife: `You got a job?' She says, `No, I travel on the road with you.' He says to her friend: `You got a job?' She says, `No, I ain't got a job -- I am retired with my husband.' He says, `Well, you got no job and she got no job, then why don't you two go buy that house `cause I am staying here.' "