Armstrong museum expanding

From the Wall Street Journal:

The man known to millions as "Satchmo" is in the news again this week thanks to a pair of announcements by the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, Queens. The Armstrong collection was opened in 1994, and the 107th Street house itself, where the trumpeter lived from 1943 until his death in 1971, was opened to the public in 2003. Up to now, the archive has been housed at Queens College, and has been described as the largest collection devoted to a single jazz musician anywhere in the world.

At a press conference at the Armstrong house last week, the museum's director, Michael Cogswell, announced that ground will be broken in the Spring of 2011 on a new visitor's center to be located on the other side of 107th Street. The building, which will be completed in 2013, will house the entire Armstrong library and include an 80-seat space for musical performances and educational purposes.

Said Mr. Cogswell, "The world is more interested than ever in Louis Armstrong."

The library includes material not only from Armstrong and his wife, Lucille Armstrong, but also from Phoebe Jacobs, who helped found the Armstrong Educational Foundation (the organization that supports the museum) in 1969, and Jack Bradley, an avid jazz researcher and photographer who gathered and took thousands of photos of the Armstrongs through the decades.