Alice Austen House

Photographic memory

Wealthy nineteenth-century New Yorkers made their summer homes on Staten Island’s shore. Alice Austen’s house, Clear Comfort, overlooked NY Harbor, the Statue of Liberty, and lower Manhattan. She was one of the earliest and most prolific female photographers in the US.

Alice was two in 1868 when her father left and she and her mother moved to this, her grandparents’ home. When she was ten, a seacaptain uncle let her tinker with a camera acquired on his travels. It was a large intricate device with heavy glass plates, but she learned to master it. She took 8,000 pictures in her lifetime. Some were staged, depicting family and friends at play (sailing, yachting, riding) with Alice herself in the frame, shutter-release in hand. Or she’d haul the cumbersome camera onto the ferry to explore Manhattan’s dim corners, documenting lives of the poor, displaced, and diseased.

An ace tennis player, cyclist, and the first Staten Island woman to own a car, Alice bucked convention, spent her days in the company of women, and for fifty years lived with her friend Gertrude Tate. When the 1929 stock market crash left her a pauper, she mortgaged the house, sold its contents, and eventually ended up in a county poorhouse. In 1951, 3,000 of her photo plates were found in a storage area of the Staten Island Historical Society, and Alice’s artistry was celebrated. She was transferred to a private nursing home and, before she died, attended a gala reception held in her honor at Clear Comfort.

In recent years her Victorian Gothic cottage was lovingly restored –the parlor is recaptured as it appeared in its heyday, displaying a camera like Alice’s. Hallways are lined with her work. There’s a gallery for contemporary exhibits, a film about her, and a library. Come to picnic on the lawn, attend its cultural programs and activities, and celebrate the art of photography and a woman of independent spirit.

Address 2 Hylan Boulevard (at Edgewater Street), Staten Island, New York 10305, +1 718.816.4506, www.aliceausten.org, info@aliceausten.org | Getting there to Staten Island

Ferry: Subway: South Ferry (1), Bowling Green (4, 5), Whitehall St-South Ferry (R); bus: M 5, M 15, M 20; from ferry terminal in Staten Island: bus: S 51 (to Hylan Boulevard) |

Hours Mar. – Dec. Tue – Sat noon – 5pm; Jan., Feb. by appointment | Tip Visit a quirky gallery behind the counter at DeLuca General Store on Bay Street, where folk-art lovers go wild over robots, battleships, planes, and rockets Mr. DeLuca made from found objects.