Archinect - News

17 years in the making, Caples Jefferson's Louis Armstrong Center finally debuts in Queens

2023-07-07T18:09:00-04:00

July 6th marked the long-awaited public opening of New York City’s new Louis Armstrong Center in Queens, culminating a 17-year journey to properly honor the legacy of the man called 'Satchmo' in the neighborhood he proudly made his home from 1943 until the music finally ended in 1971.

The small, 14,000-square-foot design from Caples Jefferson is located the directly across 107th Street street from the storied musician’s landmarked former residence (now the Louis Armstrong House Museum) in the still heavily working-class section of Corona, Queens.

Image courtesy of Albert Vercerka/Esto

The project was thus conceived to be an interpretive welcoming center to the museum’s visitors, with a documentary archive, exhibition area, and live jazz room all tucked into its eye-catching bronze-colored faceted flat glass façade envelope.

Image courtesy of Albert Vercerka/Esto

The architects explain: "In order to expand the capacity of this relatively modest hou...

Historic New Orleans jazz destination that helped launch Louis Armstrong to fame destroyed by Hurricane Ida

2021-08-30T17:41:00-04:00

Video shot Monday morning shows New Orleans’ historic Karnofsky Shop was destroyed by Hurricane Ida Sunday. [...] The site, located on South Rampart Street, is where Louis Armstrong played jazz music and briefly worked. It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The two-story brick building in New Orleans’ Central Business District has stood vacant for decades and was considered a hallmark of both Jazz history and Jewish culture within the Crescent City. The Karnofsky family, which purportedly loaned Louis Armstrong the money to buy his first cornet, later converted the one-time tailor shop into the city’s first jazz record store thanks to Armstrong’s childhood friend Morris Karnofsky. The building has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2002.

This is the Karnofsky Shop - a historic place. Louis Armstrong worked here and bought his first trumpet here. Collapsed during #HurricaneIda. pic.twitter.com/FsL4B1LbI8
— Jack Royer (@JackRoyer) August 30, 2021

Previous attempts had been made to convert the disused building into a nightclub. The 400 block of South Rampart street also houses historic sites like the former Eagle Saloon and Iroquois Theatre. USA Today has more on the destroyed landmark here.

Frank Gehry to work as scenic designer for jazz opera

2021-05-04T14:01:00-04:00

Frank Gehry has joined forces with legendary saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter and fellow jazz musician Esperanza Spalding to serve as the scenic designer for the jazz opera Iphigenia. The architect even opened up his kitchen for work and rehearsals of the project.

Based on Euripides’ play Iphigenia in Aulis, the opera is Shorter’s first plunge into the classical space, the realization of his lifelong dream to compose an opera since he was a 19-year-old music student.

As mentioned on New Music USA, “...these three singular artists are creating on a truly unique theatrical vision that seeks to deconstruct this classic text, transposed onto a modern, Black-American family, and disrupt the script of stories about gender, race, and family that we’re told can never change.”

Archinect's Orhan Ayyuce and Frank Gehry in conversation, from An Interview with Frank Gehry, Who Turns 90 Today, Upon Receiving the Neutra Award for Professional Excellence

Iphigenia has been a work in progress f...

Frank Gehry is working for free as architect of new Jazz Bakery

2012-02-01T00:35:00-05:00

Ruth Price, president and artistic director of the Jazz Bakery since it debuted in 1992, said Tuesday that she didn’t know Gehry, or even ask for his help, before he called about six months ago to volunteer his services. “He said, 'I’m doing this for two people: Sydney Pollack, and my wife, Berta.’ ” Film director Pollack, a close friend of the architect, died in 2008..."