Marlene Wagman-Geller

Apr 11, 2025 by Marlene Wagman-Geller

Chapter 8

Staten Island Shangri-La

Jacques Marchais

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“It stands as a great monument to our love!”—Jacques Marchais (letter to Harry Klauber)

 

The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art (opened 1947)

338 Lighthouse Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10306

(718) 987-3500

https://www.tibetanmuseum.org/

 

 

 

In 1933 James Hilton published Lost Horizons whose backdrop, the Himalayas, is known as “the rooftop of the world.” For those unable to travel to the fabled kingdom, take the ferry to Staten Island’s The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art.

Johnny Cash’s 1969 song “A Boy Named Sue” revolves around a man who has spent his life with upraised fists, infuriated that his father had saddled him with a female name. In a similar vein, John Coblentz christened his daughter Jacques Marchais. In the Cash song, the adult Sue reconciles with his father when the old man explained his rationale: his effeminate moniker would teach him to be tough. Jacques never had the opportunity to inquire why her father had bequeathed her a French boy’s name as John passed away when she was a toddler.

Jacques Marchais Coblentz was born in 1887 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her mother, Margaret, a widow without means of support, entrusted Jacques to an orphanage run by nuns, although she was not Catholic. When Jacques was three, Margaret reclaimed her daughter and put her on the vaudeville circuit. As a male name would cause confusion, she billed Jacques as Edna Coblentz or Edna Norman (her maiden name). Wealthy Chicago families requested private performances—one of whom was Mike Cassius McDonald, who introduced organized crime to Chicago.

When she was five years old, Margaret opened a chest that had gathered decades of dust in their attic. The Pandora’s Box held thirteen bronze deities her great-grandfather, John Joseph Norman, a Philadelphia sea merchant, had received from an Indian lama in Darjeeling.

At age sixteen, Jacques travelled to Boston to star in the comedy Peggy from Paris, where she met Brookings Montgomery, a student at MIT. When Brookings married the destitute teen, his prominent St. Louis family disowned him. The couple had children Edna May, Jane, and Brookings Jr.; they divorced in 1910. Six years later, Jacques married hotel manager Percy S. Deponai, a union that came with a one-year expiration date.

While Horace Greeley had admonished, “Go West, young man,” Jacques left for the East hoping to make it big on Broadway- leaving behind her two former husbands and children. What she did take with her were the thirteen bronze figurines. Although she never found success as an actress, she was to excel on a different stage.

In Manhattan, Jacques met Harry Klauber (nicknamed “the Governor”), who proved opposites do attract. The Brooklyn-born Jewish entrepreneur and the midwestern Christian spiritualist married in 1918. The third marital try proved the charm though Jacques was very different than the women in Harry’s circle, for whom mink stoles were de rigeur.  

In the early 1900s, Staten Island developer William Platt had remarked the neighborhood carried “unimagined possibilities; a land of paradise. Have you the desire to be your own Landlord, to own your home on a grand picturesque plateau with the most magnificent view of the Ocean and Bay?” The answer to his question: a resounding yes for the Klaubers. In 1921, with the income from Harry’s chemical business, the couple purchased a residence on three acres on a hill on 340 Lighthouse Avenue (then Seaview Avenue).

As Harry worked with his chemicals, Jacques pursued her studies of all things regarding Himalaya, the land she felt was her spiritual homeland. Because of health issues, the dangers associated with travelling to the world that mingled with the clouds, and the Tibetans’ unwillingness to admit foreigners, Jacques transformed into a dedicated armchair traveler. She earned a black belt in shopping in her relentless pursuit of Tibetan art, statuary, and relics. Her Staten Island home became—to borrow a title from a Charles Dickens novel—a little curiosity shop- filled with exotic finds.

When she ran out of space for her treasures, to house the overflow and to educate the West about the East, she opened the Jacques Marchais Gallery at 40 East Fifty-First Street in New York City. After a decade, she closed her store’s doors to create a Tibetan temple. The inspiration stemmed from an exhibition dedicated to the Lama Temple Potala at the 1933 Century of Progress International Exhibition in Chicago.

In contrast to the Potala Palace in Lhasa (the home of the Dalai Lamas) that held more than a thousand rooms and ten thousand shrines, Jacques determined to do what she could to make her museum emulate a slice of Himalaya. The building’s interior would be conducive to meditation; a huge Buddha would serve as benevolent deity.

In 1945 the world gained a macabre geography: Dacha, Treblinka, Auschwitz. In the same year, in Staten Island, Jacques planned what she referred to as the “Portola of the West” which she envisioned would be an enclave of peace, spirituality, and compassion. Along with local mason Joseph Premiano, who constructed the edifice, she drove around Staten Island in her pickup truck, hauling stones to embed in the temple’s walls.

In 1947, a grand dedication ceremony marked the opening of the Jacques Marchais Center of Tibetan Art, an event covered by Life magazine in its article “New York Lamasery.” An accompanying photograph showcases Jacques in a long blue gown, seated in an antique red-lacquer Chinese chair that rests in front of an altar flanked by two bronze Nepalese lions.

Tragically, Madame Marchais had little time to revel in her dream. Four months later, she passed away in her home at age sixty from complications of diabetes, cerebral embolism, and coronary disease. Her burial was in a Christian cemetery on Staten Island. An adherent of reincarnation, perhaps Jacques was in her museum in 1991 when His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, blessed the premises. His scarf graces the neck of one of the buddhas. In her will, Jacques left everything to Harry. Her husband survived her by seven months and bequeathed the property and its collections to the museum as a memorial to his wife.

 

The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art

Pilgrims who visit the “Jewel on the Hillside” are initially taken aback by the two stone buildings that resemble a Tibetan lamasery incongruously sitting on Staten Island. The structures were the first to employ Himalayan-style architecture in the country and the first devoted to Tibetan art. The museum claims to possess America’s only Bhutanese sand mandala, the multicolored sand design that represents the dwelling of a deity. The tranquility is such that one can hear the chirping of the birds. The terraced Samadhi Garden derives its name from the Sanskrit for the cycle of birth, the principle of karma. The museum’s vantage point affords a vista of Lower New York Bay. In a pond, oversized goldfish make their rounds around lotus flowers. Stone elephants and rocks are inscribed with mantras. Nearby is an enormous Chinese gong. The smell of incense leaves a heady scent.

Although Madame Marchais did not journey to the East, she amassed some of its treasures. The temple-museum holds over five thousand objects; visitors can gaze upon sculptures, ritual objects, musical instruments, scroll paintings, and furniture. The relics originated in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Northern China, Mongolia, and Southeast Asia. The museum maintains a permanent exhibit of 125 objects; the remainder is showcased on a rotating basis. The exoticism of the exhibits is enhanced with their ties to antiquity: they span from the twelfth through the twentieth century. The grounds hold brightly colored prayer flags, chanting rooms, and meditation cells.

Photographs of historic interest are also part of the appeal. In 1942, after months of slogging through mountains and snow, the grandson of novelist Leo Tolstoy, Lieutenant Colonel Ilia Tolstoy, arrived at the palace of the Dalai Lama. Tolstoy’s black-and-white photograph of the eight-year-old god-king’s picture now resides world’s away in Staten Island.

The oldest section houses a library with two thousand books on the topic of the Far East as well as a gift shop. A few steps away, a second building has a five-level stone altar, in keeping with Buddhist tradition, that takes up an entire wall. On the altar rests many-armed sculptures of gods, Chinese cloisonné braziers, and three Tibetan tankas—paintings depicting items of religious significance. Nearby reside reliquaries and a Japanese folding shrine that consists of wood and gilt doors. The central sculpture depicts a bronze figure of Tsong-kha-pa, a religious reformer and the founder of the Yellow Hat sect of Buddhism. A few of the artifacts are made from human bones, such as a skull bowl—hopefully not for sale in the gift shop.

For those with a hankering for Eastern mysticism in a New York borough, head to the museum created by an American woman with a Frenchman’s name. The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art is Staten Island’s Shangri-La.

 

A View from Her Window

When Jacques gazed from her window at the embodiment of her dream, she must have marveled at the magic carpet that had transported her from an orphanage to the owner of a museum.

 

Nearby Attraction: Snug Harbor Cultural Center

The eighty-three-acre center holds a Chinese Scholar’s Garden with magnificent rocks, which conjures the poetry of Confucius—the image of Buddhist monks, hands clasped in prayer.

While Horace Greeley had admonished, “Go West, young man,” Jacques left for the East hoping to make it big on Broadway- leaving behind her two former husbands and children. What she did take with her were the thirteen bronze figurines. Although she never found success as an actress, she was to excel on a different stage.

In Manhattan, Jacques met Harry Klauber (nicknamed “the Governor”), who proved opposites do attract. The Brooklyn-born Jewish entrepreneur and the midwestern Christian spiritualist married in 1918. The third marital try proved the charm though Jacques was very different than the women in Harry’s circle, for whom mink stoles were de rigeur.  

In the early 1900s, Staten Island developer William Platt had remarked the neighborhood carried “unimagined possibilities; a land of paradise. Have you the desire to be your own Landlord, to own your home on a grand picturesque plateau with the most magnificent view of the Ocean and Bay?” The answer to his question: a resounding yes for the Klaubers. In 1921, with the income from Harry’s chemical business, the couple purchased a residence on three acres on a hill on 340 Lighthouse Avenue (then Seaview Avenue).

As Harry worked with his chemicals, Jacques pursued her studies of all things regarding Himalaya, the land she felt was her spiritual homeland. Because of health issues, the dangers associated with travelling to the world that mingled with the clouds, and the Tibetans’ unwillingness to admit foreigners, Jacques transformed into a dedicated armchair traveler. She earned a black belt in shopping in her relentless pursuit of Tibetan art, statuary, and relics. Her Staten Island home became—to borrow a title from a Charles Dickens novel—a little curiosity shop- filled with exotic finds.

When she ran out of space for her treasures, to house the overflow and to educate the West about the East, she opened the Jacques Marchais Gallery at 40 East Fifty-First Street in New York City. After a decade, she closed her store’s doors to create a Tibetan temple. The inspiration stemmed from an exhibition dedicated to the Lama Temple Potala at the 1933 Century of Progress International Exhibition in Chicago.

In contrast to the Potala Palace in Lhasa (the home of the Dalai Lamas) that held more than a thousand rooms and ten thousand shrines, Jacques determined to do what she could to make her museum emulate a slice of Himalaya. The building’s interior would be conducive to meditation; a huge Buddha would serve as benevolent deity.

In 1945 the world gained a macabre geography: Dacha, Treblinka, Auschwitz. In the same year, in Staten Island, Jacques planned what she referred to as the “Portola of the West” which she envisioned would be an enclave of peace, spirituality, and compassion. Along with local mason Joseph Premiano, who constructed the edifice, she drove around Staten Island in her pickup truck, hauling stones to embed in the temple’s walls.

In 1947, a grand dedication ceremony marked the opening of the Jacques Marchais Center of Tibetan Art, an event covered by Life magazine in its article “New York Lamasery.” An accompanying photograph showcases Jacques in a long blue gown, seated in an antique red-lacquer Chinese chair that rests in front of an altar flanked by two bronze Nepalese lions.

Tragically, Madame Marchais had little time to revel in her dream. Four months later, she passed away in her home at age sixty from complications of diabetes, cerebral embolism, and coronary disease. Her burial was in a Christian cemetery on Staten Island. An adherent of reincarnation, perhaps Jacques was in her museum in 1991 when His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, blessed the premises. His scarf graces the neck of one of the buddhas. In her will, Jacques left everything to Harry. Her husband survived her by seven months and bequeathed the property and its collections to the museum as a memorial to his wife.

 

The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art

Pilgrims who visit the “Jewel on the Hillside” are initially taken aback by the two stone buildings that resemble a Tibetan lamasery incongruously sitting on Staten Island. The structures were the first to employ Himalayan-style architecture in the country and the first devoted to Tibetan art. The museum claims to possess America’s only Bhutanese sand mandala, the multicolored sand design that represents the dwelling of a deity. The tranquility is such that one can hear the chirping of the birds. The terraced Samadhi Garden derives its name from the Sanskrit for the cycle of birth, the principle of karma. The museum’s vantage point affords a vista of Lower New York Bay. In a pond, oversized goldfish make their rounds around lotus flowers. Stone elephants and rocks are inscribed with mantras. Nearby is an enormous Chinese gong. The smell of incense leaves a heady scent.

Although Madame Marchais did not journey to the East, she amassed some of its treasures. The temple-museum holds over five thousand objects; visitors can gaze upon sculptures, ritual objects, musical instruments, scroll paintings, and furniture. The relics originated in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Northern China, Mongolia, and Southeast Asia. The museum maintains a permanent exhibit of 125 objects; the remainder is showcased on a rotating basis. The exoticism of the exhibits is enhanced with their ties to antiquity: they span from the twelfth through the twentieth century. The grounds hold brightly colored prayer flags, chanting rooms, and meditation cells.

Photographs of historic interest are also part of the appeal. In 1942, after months of slogging through mountains and snow, the grandson of novelist Leo Tolstoy, Lieutenant Colonel Ilia Tolstoy, arrived at the palace of the Dalai Lama. Tolstoy’s black-and-white photograph of the eight-year-old god-king’s picture now resides world’s away in Staten Island.

The oldest section houses a library with two thousand books on the topic of the Far East as well as a gift shop. A few steps away, a second building has a five-level stone altar, in keeping with Buddhist tradition, that takes up an entire wall. On the altar rests many-armed sculptures of gods, Chinese cloisonné braziers, and three Tibetan tankas—paintings depicting items of religious significance. Nearby reside reliquaries and a Japanese folding shrine that consists of wood and gilt doors. The central sculpture depicts a bronze figure of Tsong-kha-pa, a religious reformer and the founder of the Yellow Hat sect of Buddhism. A few of the artifacts are made from human bones, such as a skull bowl—hopefully not for sale in the gift shop.

For those with a hankering for Eastern mysticism in a New York borough, head to the museum created by an American woman with a Frenchman’s name. The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art is Staten Island’s Shangri-La.

 

A View from Her Window

When Jacques gazed from her window at the embodiment of her dream, she must have marveled at the magic carpet that had transported her from an orphanage to the owner of a museum.

 

Nearby Attraction: Snug Harbor Cultural Center

The eighty-three-acre center holds a Chinese Scholar’s Garden with magnificent rocks, which conjures the poetry of Confucius—the image of Buddhist monks, hands clasped in prayer.

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