Starting May 1, No Reservation Needed to Tour Tao House on Saturdays

With the summer months right around the corner, starting May 1 you won't need a reservation to visit the Tao House on Saturdays.

Nobel prize-winning playwright Eugene O'Neill wrote his most acclaimed masterpieces while living at the house in the hills above Danville, from 1937 to 1944. He lived at the home with his third wife Carlotta Monterey O'Neill and called the house his "final harbor."

In 1937 he wrote to his friend Barrett H. Clark:

"We have a beautiful site on the hills of the San Ramon Valley with one of the most beautiful views I've ever seen. This is the final home and harbor for me. I love California. Moreover, the climate is one I know I can work and keep healthy in."

While living at Tao House, O'Neill wrote five of his most famous plays, including "A Long Day's Journey into Night," "The Iceman Cometh" and "Moon for the Misbegotten."

In "Long Day's Journey," O'Neill explores growing up in a troubled Irish-American family, beset by dysfunction and addiction, problems that he took into his own adulthood.

The two-story, Spanish Mission-style home overlooks the San Ramon Valley with stunning views of Mount Diablo and rolling wooded hills. A visitor can spot a black-tailed mule deer, bobcat or wild turkey roaming free on the protected land. The property is now an historic site, managed by the National Park Service and the Danville-based Eugene O'Neill Foundation.

The O'Neills built their home on 158 acres purchased from the Bryant Ranch, using money from the playwright's 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature. Its bucolic and isolated location in the Los Trampas Hills gave O'Neill the peace and privacy he needed to write – a privacy that Carlotta guarded fiercely.

From his second-floor study, O'Neill could see the waters of the Carquinez Strait to the north, the walnut and fruit orchards across the San Ramon Valley to the west and the wooded hills to the east.

The Tour

Nowadays, Tao House estate is inside a gated community of private homes. Visitors register for the tour in advance and catch a free 10-minute shuttle ride from the Museum of San Ramon Valley in downtown Danville to the historic home, set at the top of a steep hill on Kuss Road.

National Park Service Ranger Jordan Yee gave a tour of the home one recent Friday to about a dozen visitors. Yee was a mine of information about the Tao House, Eugene O'Neill and his plays, and the history and development of theatre in general.

He explained that curators were able to recreate how the Tao House looked when the O'Neills lived there from photos taken in a 1940 photo shoot for "Life" magazine.

Jim Cotton and his wife Lois were visiting from Charlotte, North Carolina, and were impressed by Yee's knowledge.

"I have listened to many people describe parks," said Jim Cotton, who has visited 310 of the 391 national parks in the country. "This guy was really good, he did a great job of blending anecdotal and factual information about O'Neill."

Yee began the tour by explaining why the O'Neills choose to call their home Tao House.

"Tao stands for a Chinese character that means 'living in harmony with nature,'" said Yee. "The O'Neills understood the concept as 'the house of the right way of living.'"

He said that both the O'Neills were interested and influenced by Asian philosophy and art and incorporated that into elements of their home.

The 5,000-square-foot house is built of custom-made basalt brick walls, giving the interior an austere, but modern, look. Carlotta, a former actress, gave the house theatrical flair with dark blue ceilings and colored mirrors. Every room features built-in bookcases.

"I want a home with room for 8,000 books and 300 pairs of shoes," Carlotta said.

Two rooms are particularly interesting. Rosie's Room, so-called after the piano that Carlotta gave to her husband, is a small circular room with views over Mount Diablo. O'Neill often ate breakfast there before heading to his upstairs study to write. The walls are covered in photos, representative of those captured in the "Life" magazine shoot. Yee pointed out that there are no photos of the couple's children from previous marriages on any wall in the house.

However, there are photos of the couple's beloved Dalmatian Blemie, whose passing is marked with a gravestone on the property. Carlotta said that Blemie "is the only one of our children who never disillusioned us."

O'Neill had two sons, Eugene Jr. and Shane, both of whom became addicts and eventually committed suicide. O'Neill disowned his 18-year-old daughter Oona when she married Charlie Chaplin, who was 36 years her senior.

O'Neill's study, where he wrote his award-winning plays, has the nautical feel of a ship captain's quarters, reflecting his youthful adventures - or some might say misadventures - as a sailor. The room has bookshelves on three walls and two large desks. Yee explained that O'Neill had multiple writing projects going on at once and needed two desks to work.

Although O'Neill thought Tao House would be his final home, it was not to be. His health had been failing for a number of years. With the onset of World War II, the house staff gradually left for war duties, and the O'Neills found themselves isolated in their home. They sold the house and moved to a hotel in San Francisco for the duration of the war and later moved to a hotel in Boston, where O'Neill died in 1953.

According to Yee, O'Neill lamented, "I was born in a hotel room and, damn it, I'm going to die in a hotel room."

Free guided tours of Tao House are available Wednesday through Sunday; the shuttle leaves the Museum of San Ramon Valley, 205 Railroad Road, at 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. The tour lasts about 2 hours. For reservations, call (925) 838-0249. On Saturdays only, beginning May 1, no reservations are required. The shuttle leaves the museum at 10 a.m., noon and 2 p.m. For large group reservations, call (925) 943-1531.