High Life on Staten Island
If you're looking for a museum to visit this weekend and want to avoid the crowds at the Met, then consider the easy trip to the Rosebank shorefront of Staten Island. The Alice Austen House is one of the city's unsung gems. It's also closed in January and February.
Take the Staten Island Ferry, then the S51 bus to Hylan Boulevard — only a 15-minute ride. Walk about one block towards the water, and you'll see the house.
The modestly exquisite clapboard building, its manicured grounds, and the Narrows form one of the loveliest settings in the region.
In 1844, Manhattanite John Austen purchased a small, dilapidated 18thcentury farm house that he remodeled for his family's use as a summer home. His wife named it "Clear Comfort." Eight years later, the couple made Clear Comfort their year-round residence. The remodeling, in the "Carpenter Gothic" style, with lacy bargeboards and birdhouses for finials, reflected the influence of landscape gardener Andrew Jackson Downing, the foremost tastemaker of antebellum America. Through his bestselling books, Downing pioneered the picturesque cottage set amid romantically landscaped grounds, inventing a kind of suburban taste that, in degraded form, still serves many subdivision developers. At Clear Comfort, the form is perfectly realized. It's precisely the rustic simplicity and picturesque charm Downing advocated.
In the late 1860s, John Austen's daughter and granddaughter, who was named Alice, joined the household, along with Mrs. Austen's brother, sister, and brother-in-law. They formed an interesting, cultivated clan. Alice inherited the house and lived there for many years with her longtime companion, Gertrude Tate.
The house would be interesting regardless of who lived there. But Alice Austen was one of the fascinating American women of her generation. Her inheritance allowed her to live most of her life without money cares, and to partake of the life of a fashionable Staten Island socialite (back when socialites were numerous on Staten Island). Her financial freedom also allowed her to indulge her free spirit. As an early member of the Colony Club (Manhattan's first women's club), Alice fit in with the maverick likes of Anne Morgan and Elisabeth Marbury. She also indulged her passions for sports, gardening, and, above all, photography, in which she developed a deep interest and technical expertise while she was still a girl. Her photographs, many of which may be viewed at the house, form an outstanding record of life in her time, a record surprisingly diverse. Alice documented not only genteel society but hauled her camera gear through Manhattan streets, recording the life of all the city.
She lost all her money in the 1929 market crash and, after trying to run a tea room out of Clear Comfort, had to sell all her possessions. She moved out in 1945 and was legally declared a pauper in 1950. But in the next two years before she died, the rediscovery of her photographs raised her from obscurity and poverty.
The house is open this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m.. It's open late enough that you may gaze across the Narrows to the awesome sight of the Verrazano Bridge as its lights come on. What a magical way to bid 2006 farewell.
