Habitats: Private Lives in the Big City

20 Magic Moments: RORY FELDMAN AND HIS MOTHER IN HOMECREST, BROOKLYN (June 27, 2010)

1 1 4 20 Magic Moments Rory Feldman and His Mother in Homecrest, Brooklyn JUNE 27, 2010 Rory Feldman, a magician and collector of memorabilia related to the magician Howard Thurston, in Hillcrest, Brooklyn. (Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times) 1 1 5 “Pick a card, any card,” Rory Feldman instructs a visitor as he stands in the living room of his Brooklyn apartment and extends a well-thumbed deck. When the visitor chooses the three of clubs, Mr. Feldman tears off one corner, marks the back of the card with an X and the visitor’s initials, folds the card into a tiny square, and clenches it in his fist. Seconds later, the marked card reappears on a nearby shelf, tucked inside a worn brown leather wallet with the name Howard Thurston embossed in gold. The spirit of Thurston, a turn-of-the-last-century illusionist who wasn’t ashamed to call himself “the world’s greatest magician,” looms over this room. From the colorful vintage posters that line the walls, so close to one another that they’re practically touching, a somber-faced man with sensitive dark eyes stares down at Mr. Feldman as if silently urging him on. Thurston’s image is refracted endlessly in hundreds of photographs and programs that fill floor-to-ceiling display cabinets, as if this modest living room deep in the heart of Brooklyn were a carnival funhouse of mirrors. In one image, in which the magician’s matinee-idol looks are set off by a glossy black jacket with a carnation in the lapel, Thurston gazes almost adoringly at a skull he holds in his hands.“Do the spirits come back?” the title wonders. When people think of the golden age of magic—the late 19th and early 20th centuries—the name Harry Houdini invariably comes to mind, along with a mental picture of a muscular man untangling himself from a prison of chains. But in Mr. Feldman’s opinion, magic’s true virtuoso was a largely forgotten Midwesterner whose act was described as “the wonder show of the universe” and whose proficiency with cards was second to none. “Houdini, who was primarily an escape artist, was impressive but no rival,” says Mr. Feldman, a 29-year-old magician and passionate collector of all things Thurston.“Thurston, though, was the master of his craft. He was a superstar—everyone who saw him said so. They said he was likable , funny, that he loved his audience. He performed for poor children, for orphans, for crippled children.” Mr. Feldman finds it tragic that few people remember his name. Thurston was born in 1869 in Columbus, Ohio, lived for a time in Whitestone, Queens, and died in Miami in 1936 at the age of 66. But if any place honors his memory, it’s this two-bedroom apartment on East M A g I C M O M E N T S 1 1 6 17th Street, in a neighborhood officially known as Homecrest but described by many residents as Midwood. Here Mr. Feldman has established a shrine to his idol. The living room is dominated by his collection of 18,000 items—props, costumes, programs, instructional manuals—arranged in those custom-built display cabinets, one of which extends the length of a long wall. More than 100 scrapbooks are stuffed with photographs , lithographs, archival material, and ephemera. An honest-toGod museum couldn’t be more comprehensive or have been created with more passion. Mr. Feldman grew up in this apartment, which is located in a small postwar building, and shares the space with his mother, Suzanne, who moved in as a bride in 1974. Less than a decade later, at 31, Ms. Feldman ’s husband died, leaving her with two young sons, Rory, then 2, and his 4-year-old brother, Morgan. She stayed in the apartment, for which she now pays $1,500 in rent, and so did her younger child. Not every mother would relish sharing her home with a long-dead illusionist. But Ms. Feldman insists that she has grown fond of the individual who’s virtually a third member of the household. “Years ago, of course, the living room was decorated differently,” says Ms. Feldman, who teaches prekindergarten in the same classroom where her younger son was a pupil nearly a quarter of a century ago. “But Rory’s collection gives the room such appeal—all the...