Building Tour: Louis Armstrong Center and the House Museum
Join us for a Louis Armstrong “double-header” in Queens: The Louis Armstrong Center and the Louis Armstrong House Museum. Sara Caples, AIA, and Everardo Jefferson, AIA, of Caples Jefferson Architects will lead us on a tour of the Louis Armstrong Center, the new state-of-the-art building which preserves and expands the legacy and ideals of America’s first Black popular music icon. The visit will continue with a docent-led tour of the Louis Armstrong House Museum.
The Louis Armstrong Center celebrates Armstrong’s distinctive role in African-Diaspora history and vitality, offering year-round exhibitions, performances, readings, lectures, and screenings through an array of public programs for all ages.
As designed by Caples Jefferson, the Louis Armstrong Center is at the scale of the modest neighborhood that Armstrong loved, while creating an urban precinct for his music that welcomes in all visitors. This new building establishes the final piece of the campus that now comprises the museum as whole; it now includes the home itself that reflects the personal values of Louis Armstrong, the garden that serves as a place for gathering and a place for live performances, and the visitor center, designed as an interpretation of Armstrong’s music, where the public can learn even more about the icon that is Louis Armstrong.
Speakers:
Sara Caples, AIA, Co-founder and Principal, Caples Jefferson Architects
Everardo Jefferson, AIA, Co-founder and Principal, Caples Jefferson Architects
About the Speakers:
Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson are co-founders and principals of Caples Jefferson Architects PC (CJA), an award-winning design and architecture firm based in New York City. At the intersection of design and social equity, Caples’s work seeks to create a “joyously broadened” modern architectural language that provides enriched and enriching experiences for all. Jefferson’s practice centers on the intersection of social equity, education, and culture. Since its founding in 1987, CJA has remained committed to performing at least half its work in communities that have historically been underserved by the design professions. Among CJA’s most notable projects are Queens Theatre-in-the-Park, which expanded a former World’s Fair building in Flushing Meadows, Queens, into a public theater; the Weeksville Heritage Center, a museum, performance, and educational program space built around a rediscovered freedmen’s preservation site in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Caples and Jefferson have also co-authored the monograph Many Voices: Architecture for Social Equity, which was published in 2022.