Tours to Tao House in the west hills of Danville are special in many ways. The house itself, where playwright Eugene O’Neill lived from 1937 to 1944, is unique, with stunning views. Also, because private cars are not allowed on the road to the National Historic Site, a park ranger drives visitors in a van, leaving from the Sycamore Valley Park and Ride. Although this means that a visit calls for a little advanced planning, it also means it includes a pleasant sightseeing trip. On my recent tour, because it included visitors from Napa, Davis and Palm Springs, our bus driver took the scenic route.
We drove down San Ramon Valley Boulevard and turned onto Railroad Avenue, where the sidewalk was filled with bikers on a coffee break and moms wheeling strollers toward the farmers market. Our guide pointed out the depot, where O’Neill could have met the trains from Martinez, and Elliott’s bar, where O’Neill’s son, according to local lore, spent time at the bar.
We passed San Ramon Valley High School and wound our way up to Kuss Road, which has been gated since the mid-’80s. The narrow, winding road ends at Tao House. As we stood gazing at an old, whitewashed barn in front of oak-studded hills, it was easy to follow tour guide Wendy Cooper’s instructions to imagine we were back in Eugene O’Neill’s time.
Seeking a place where he could write without interruption, O’Neill, who was born in 1888, used part of the stipend from his 1936 Nobel Prize to purchase 158 acres of secluded beauty. His wife Carlotta and her daughter, Cynthia, who lived in Oakland, helped him find his “final harbor.”
As she planned the exterior, Carlotta combined adobe-like bricks reminiscent of early California architecture with Oriental accents that reflected the O’Neill’s interest in Eastern thought. Tao (dow) means “The Way” and the Chinese characters on their garden gate roughly translate to “House of the Righteous Way.”
The brick path to the house has as many right angles as a maze. It is intended to stop evil spirits. So are the fake steps into the house and the red front door, which is hidden from view as one enters the yard.
Inside, the house mirrors nature. The ceilings are dark as the nighttime sky, and the floor’s tiles are earthen colored. The entry hall is filled with masks, and statues of Foo Dogs frame the staircase.
Numerous downstairs walls are accented with large, square indentations that were planned for bookshelves. Colored mirrors were placed in two of them: emerald green in the hallway, sapphire blue in the living room. O’Neill shelved his 8,000-volume library there. Most of those books are now at Long Island University, and the bulk of his mysteries went to World War II servicemen.
The furnishings, originally purchased from Gumps and Sloanes, have been recreated with as much historical accuracy as possible, using photos from the O’Neills’ time in the house.
Rosie, a player piano, supposedly from a New Orleans bordello, sits in the breakfast room. O’Neill loved that piano, and local residents reported the sounds of its music wafting into the valley. In that room he tracked World War II using a map on the wall. Photos have been added to the walls today, including a dramatic portrait of Carlotta.
Carlotta Monterey, who was born Hazel Tharsing, changed her name when she became an actress. She met O’Neill while acting in one of his plays and became his protector and guardian as well as his third wife. For her bedroom she purchased a carved teak bed and plenty of blue silk.
If the door to O’Neill’s bedroom and study across the hall was shut, no one was allowed to knock. His fog gray bedroom has a built-in black mirror framed by two windows looking out on Mount Diablo. Speaking of the mirror, O’Neill said, “It lets me know that I’m alive.”
A large, teak opium bed sits against the wall next to the study. Gumps, which sold the O’Neills their furniture, bought some of it back in 1944, then donated much of it to Tao House in the ’70s. The store did not acknowledge requests to return O’Neill’s opium bed, however, until Katharine Hepburn, an Honorary Member of the Eugene O’Neill Foundation, sent a firm letter. Gumps complied within the week.
Next to his bedroom is O’Neill’s study. Two spacious, finely crafted desks sit on opposite walls. The playwright used two desks because he worked on multiple projects at once, including a historical cycle of one acts, some of which he burned rather than share.
The study’s red ceiling was probably intended to ward off evil spirits, just like the front door, although it could have been in keeping with the phrase, “red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” reflecting O’Neill’s love of the sea and his early days as a seaman. Heavy wooden beams across it are reminiscent of a captain’s cabin on a ship. Though his Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes are not in the room, O’Neill’s Certificate of Discharge as an able seaman is framed and two model ships sit above the fireplace in the study.
This is the room where he wrote “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” which he dedicated to Carlotta, calling it a “tribute to love and tenderness.” Other plays written there include “A Touch of the Poet,” “More Stately Mansions,” “The Iceman Cometh,” “Hughie” and “A Moon for the Misbegotten.”
An optional part of the tour leads on a little path beside the barn to the hillside where a fence surrounds a grave for the O’Neills’ beloved dog, Blemie, marked by a tombstone.
Neither Eugene O’Neill nor Carlotta ever learned how to drive and when their friend and helper Herbert Freeman left for the Marines in 1942, they hired three local people to help them: C. F. Haskell, owner of the hardware store downtown; Edwin Olsson of Olsson’s Gas Station; and Charlie Roberts, who was also a chauffeur at Blackhawk Ranch. Once World War II began, their servants left for better paying jobs and life became difficult due to the isolation. Though O’Neill loved Tao House, he sold the property to Arthur and Charlotte Carlson in 1944 because of his failing health.
In 1966 a local newspaper headline, “Development for O’Neill Property,” caught the eye of a member of the Las Trampas Wilderness Association, Charlotte Morrison. She teamed up with Ann Cavanaugh of the Concord Library League, and together they educated the community about the significance of Tao House. The East Bay Regional Parks District purchased the property and in time O’Neill’s home was recognized as a National Historic Site.
Today Tao House averages between 2,000 and 4,000 visitors per year. Juniors and seniors in local high schools explore the house on the Foundation’s Student Days. They find the black mirror that let O’Neill know he was alive, and the ghostly images reflected in it, particularly intriguing.
Wendy Cooper said the students who visit find inspiration in the fact that much of the material for O’Neill’s greatest plays came from his life experiences. “They go home feeling that they, too, may be able to create something wonderful from the ‘less than happy’ events of their own lives,” she said. “There is a spirit about the house that inspires.”
O’Neill left a strong mark on the American theater, and his Danville home is a local treasure well worth seeing. Call 838-0249 and book a tour.
