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Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art Exterior
Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art
IMAGE DATE
2024
By
The Neighborhoods
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Lighthouse Hill
Lighthouse Hill is a small but remarkable Staten Island neighborhood bordered by Forest Hill Road, Richmond Road, Rockland Avenue, and La Tourette Golf Course, adjacent to Staten Island's Greenbelt. The neighborhood's namesake, the Staten Island Lighthouse, is a 90-foot octagonal tower built in 1912 that remains operational today. It functions as a range lighthouse working in tandem with the West Bank Light to guide ships through Ambrose Channel. Besides the lighthouse, the neighborhood is home to the only Frank Lloyd Wright designed house in New York City, Crimson Beech. Built as "Prefab No. 1" for William and Catherine Cass in the late 1950s, it was part of Wright's vision to make architectural art accessible to average Americans through prefabrication. Amazingly, neither a 90’ lighthouse nor a Frank Lloyd Wright prefab is the neighborhood’s most unique attraction. That distinction arguably belongs to the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art. Jacques Marchais was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1887. Shortly thereafter, at the age of 3, she began working as a child actress. Jacques was married twice before finally settling down in 1920 with Harry Klauber, owner and president of the Klink Chemical Corporation. A year later, they moved to Staten Island. In 1938, she opened a gallery of Indian and Tibetan art on the Upper East Side (40 East 51st St) and used the profits and connections to build a collection of Tibetan art and artifacts. Using some photographs of the Potala Palace in Lhasa as inspiration, Jacques began to build a home for her art. One can only imagine what the neighbors thought of the woman named Jacques building a replica of a Himalayan monastery in the middle of their rural Staten Island neighborhood. When asked that same question, her husband answered only, “I am in the chemical business.”
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