The Alice Austen House Museum promotes public awareness and scholarly study of the life, work, and times of Alice Austen (1866 - 1952). Austen was one of America's earliest and most prolific female photographers (producing images as early as 1878), a landscape designer (founder and first president of the Staten Island Garden Club), a master tennis player, and the first woman on Staten Island to own a car, which she knew how to fix when it broke down. Austen never married; instead she spent fifty years of her life with Gertrude Tate, her long-time companion. She was a woman who broke away from the ties of her Victorian environment to create her own very independent life.

Description and/or History:
All Museum activities evolve from the life, work, and times of Alice Austen. Our exhibitions are based on aesthetic sensitivity, imagination, and technical proficiency. Our education programs are divided into three themes: photography, local history, and the life of Alice Austen. The latter focuses on the fact that Austen withstood peer pressure and had the courage to make her own choices. In addition, we offer workshops, architectural tours, garden talks, an art fair, an antique fair, a Holiday fair, and the list goes on.

Three years ago, the Austen House joined the highly selective membership of the National Trust for Historic Preservation group of Historic Artists Homes and Studios. Today, Austen might just be the only woman in America, with the exception of Eleanor Roosevelt, to have a museum, ferry, school, and street named after her.

In the early 1960s a group of concerned citizens, with a focus on preservation, joined together with the purpose of saving Austen's family home, Clear Comfort, located within a luscious park overlooking the New York Narrows with a stunning panoramic view of lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Verrazano Bridge. By the end of the decade they had succeeded and the House was declared a National Historic Landmark. In 1985 it opened to the public.

Contact person: Sara Signorelli, Volunteer Coordinator, (718) 816-4506 x10

Address:

2 Hylan Boulevard Staten Island, NY 10305 (See a map)

Directions:

From Manhattan by Staten Island Ferry Subway to South Ferry (1/9), Whitehall Street (N/R), or Bowling Green Station (4/5) or bus or taxi to: Staten Island Ferry (25 minute ride). At the ferry terminal in Staten Island #S51 Bus to Hylan Boulevard. . . (more)   Nearest Bus Stop: S51, 2 minute walk