A New York City Historic Landmark

The Louis Armstrong House Museum is located at 34-49 107th Street in Corona, Queens, New York City. The museum preserves the home where Louis Armstrong lived for nearly 30 years, sustains and promotes his cultural, historical, and humanitarian legacy, and houses a 60,000-piece archive of his personal and professional materials.

The museum’s three-building campus encompasses the historic home, the Louis Armstrong Center, and Selma’s Place, the donated home of Selma Heraldo.

Visitors can tour Louis and Lucille Armstrong’s historic home and explore the landmark Here to Stay exhibition at the Louis Armstrong Center, experiencing Armstrong’s life and music in a setting unlike any other in New York City.

Visiting the Louis Armstrong House Museum

Louis Armstrong house tours are small and personal, limited to 10 visitors, and led by knowledgeable guides who share stories about Armstrong’s life, music, and the neighborhood he loved. The historic home remains remarkably intact from Armstrong’s lifetime, and many visitors say the experience feels like being welcomed into the Armstrong home.

The Louis Armstrong Center, opened in 2023, houses the museum’s permanent Here to Stay exhibition, a 75-seat performance venue, and the museum store, garden, and visitor facilities. The Center is located across the street from the historic home at 34-49 107th Street, Corona, NY 11368.

Museum hours are Thursday through Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Advance ticket purchase is required for house tours.

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The historic Armstrong home

Louis and Lucille Armstrong moved to their home on 107th Street in Corona in 1943 and remained there for the rest of Armstrong’s life. Lucille continued to live in the house after Louis passed in 1971, working to ensure it would become a permanent landmark honoring her husband.

Today, the home is preserved as one of the most significant jazz landmarks in the country. Guided house tours take visitors through the rooms where Louis and Lucille Armstrong lived their daily lives, with personal photographs, recordings, and Armstrong’s everyday belongings revealing the life the two shared in their Corona home.

The Louis Armstrong Center

Opened in 2023, the Louis Armstrong Center is a 14,000-square-foot cultural facility. The building was conceived to honor Armstrong’s deep roots in the Corona community while establishing a permanent home for his extraordinary legacy.

Architects Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson described their approach: “In a neighborhood comprised of modest two-story houses, we wanted to keep the building in the scale of its surroundings while creating an urban precinct that notes the singular work of the man whose music underlies so much of what we listen to today.”

The Center is the permanent home for the museum’s 60,000-piece archive, and houses a 75-seat venue offering performances, lectures, films, and educational experiences throughout the year.

Here to Stay

Here to Stay, the Louis Armstrong Center’s landmark permanent exhibition, explores Armstrong’s five-decade career as an innovative musician, rigorous archivist, consummate collaborator, and community builder. It was curated by Jason Moran, an award-winning pianist, composer, and Kennedy Center Artistic Director for Jazz. For Moran, the exhibition is “a declaration of Louis Armstrong’s infinite love of music and humanity.”

Our mission

The Louis Armstrong House Museum sustains and promotes the cultural, historical, and humanitarian legacy of Louis Armstrong through four pillars:

Preserving the legacy: Maintaining and interpreting Armstrong’s historic home, grounds, and 60,000-piece archive for generations to come.

Artistic excellence: Featuring musicians, multidisciplinary artists, and contemporary thinkers in innovative performances and programs.

Education: Providing on-site, online, and classroom experiences for students from kindergarten through higher education.

Community: Engaging Queens communities and global audiences in programming for mutual learning and inspiration.

History

Louis Armstrong and his wife Lucille moved to their home on 107th Street in Corona, Queens in 1943. For nearly 30 years the house was the center of their lives together, a place where Armstrong practiced, entertained friends and fellow musicians, and returned between tours that took him around the world. Neighbors knew him as a familiar presence on the block, and the home reflected the warmth and personality of both Louis and Lucille, who decorated and cared for it with great pride.

After Louis passed in 1971, Lucille worked to ensure the home and archives would become a museum honoring her husband. Together, Louis and Lucille had established the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation (LAEF), an organization that helped facilitate this process and continues its work today as a force for jazz education.

As she instructed in her will, when Lucille passed in 1983, the home and its contents were transferred to the City of New York, which designated the City University of New York and Queens College to shepherd the process. The archives became publicly accessible in the 1990s, and the historic house opened for guided tours in 2003. The Louis Armstrong House Museum became its own entity with expanded programs and official 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in 2008. LAHM administers the historic house under a long-term license agreement with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and Queens College.

The $26 million Louis Armstrong Center was funded through the support of the Office of the Governor, the New York State Senate and Assembly, the Office of the New York City Mayor, the Office of the Queens Borough President, and the New York City Council.

In 2025, the Louis Armstrong House Museum was named a member of New York City’s Cultural Institutions Group (CIG), joining 38 cultural institutions across all five boroughs. One of the rare expansions of the CIG in recent years, the designation recognizes the museum as a cultural anchor for Queens, New York City, and Armstrong fans worldwide.

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