Dix Hills, NY (January 2, 2024)—The four-bedroom ranch house, nestled deep in the suburban lanes of Long Island, looks like any other in the surrounding toney neighborhood of Dix Hills, but inside its walls, jazz history was made time and time again. Acknowledging that legacy, on December 29, 2023, preservationist group Friends of the Coltrane Home was awarded a $1.75 million grant to be used for restoring the house and home studio that legendary saxophonist John Coltrane and his wife, fellow musician Alice Coltrane, once called home.
In 1964, the Coltrane family moved into the 2,700-square-foot home on Candlewood Path, and it was there that John composed his landmark A Love Supreme—the 1965 album that would become a touchstone for generations of jazz lovers. In the years that followed, the couple made the then-unusual choice to build a recording studio in the basement. While commonplace today, home studios were virtually unheard of in the 1960s, but the well-appointed space—soundproofed as much to keep the sounds of their growing family out of the studio as to keep music from bothering the neighbors—was completed after he died unexpectedly from liver failure at age 40 in 1967.
A noted pianist and harpist in her own right, Alice made ample use of the studio, recording five well-regarded solo albums in the facility as well as scores of other artists, including jazz greats like drummer Ben Riley, bassists Cecil McBee and Charlie Hayden, and saxophonists Joe Henderson and Pharaoh Sanders. Throughout that time, she continued to raise her four children as a single parent, but eventually moved to California and sold the home in 1973. The house changed hands multiple times in the decades that followed, at one point being rented out annually to college students for 20 years with virtually no maintenance done during that time. The years of neglect ultimately took their toll, and eventually, the house was boarded up and earmarked for demolition by a developer in 2004.
A Labor of Love Supreme: Saving John Coltrane’s Home Studio
It was then that Friends of the Coltrane Home was formed to prevent the house from being torn down, convincing the surrounding Town of Huntington to obtain the 3.4-acre plot and declare it a park, and then sell the house—but not the land—to the organization for $1. While the building was now safe from the wrecking ball, it remained on the verge of collapse. A $1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation was used for a new roof, shoring up the frame and foundation, and gutting most of the festering interior which was covered in mold. Even today, the house still has a long way to go before it can be opened to the public, despite having been named a National Treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2018.
For years, the Friends group has wanted to do far more with the Coltrane house than merely restore it, and now with the $1.75 million JumpSMART grant awarded by Suffolk County, it will finally have that opportunity. The money was awarded as part of the county’s Main Streets program which helps fund “projects and programs that support small businesses, strengthen local arts and cultural organizations, promote tourism and enhance workforce development efforts,” according to the County’s website.
Home Studio Restoration will Build on Alice Coltrane’s Legacy
The organization plans to make the Coltrane home into an arts center, offering music education, arts outreach and more. Much of that effort will be centered around the reconstruction of the home studio, where guest musicians could perform and give master classes, while students could take music lessons and learn recording, among other possible uses for the space.
The original home studio included a glass-walled control room and a separate live room that, out of necessity, had an entrance through the garage where Coltrane kept his prized white Jaguar XKE. In 2018, the Friends group told Pro Sound News it expected to renovate the space back to how it originally looked, but outfit it with modern-day digital recording gear, though period authentic analog gear would be on display in the space as well. The new grant will also be used to renovate the house exterior and create exhibit space in both the Meditation Room and the Love Supreme Room—the tiny upstairs bedroom where Coltrane composed the song cycle.
Manhattan-based Kliment Halsband Architects and Aaris Design Architects have been named as the design teams for the new interior; the former has been entrusted with the historic preservation aspects while the latter will design the exhibition spaces.
