Eugene and Carlotta O'Neill purchased land in the San Ramon Valley in 1937 following a stay in Merritt Hospital in Oakland, California where he had an appendectomy and received the Nobel Prize for Literature bedside.

It was on this land that they hoped to build their "final harbor", Tao House.

They put a $15,000 deposit down on the 158 acre property which was part of an old Spanish Grant in the hills above what is now Danville, CA.

Carlotta purchased especially made concrete blocks the size of adobe brick from Portland Cement Co.  Her idea of Tao House was using these blocks inside and out with a dark tiled roof with a sway back old look.  She requested dark tiled floors with deep brown finish downstairs.  She wanted a mixture of primitive Spanish with Chinese suggestions inside for their Chinese things.

Carlotta was the "gofer" in the project, dealing with roads, electricity, telephones and mortgages.

The original architect  Reimers, was replaced by Frederick Confer late in the project.  Felton Elkins, who attended Baker's playwrighting class at Havard with Gene, latched on to the O'Neills as soon as they arrived on the west coast.  To a degree, he took charge of the building project.  He brought Simpson, the builder aboard.  Simpson and Elkins proposed paying the architect for the plans and getting rid of him as an economy device (and of course getting rid of the architect's supervision.)

Considering the difficult accessibility of the site, construction went quickly.  The O'Neills began to move in on December 22, 1937.  The heavy teak beds purchased at Gumps were hoisted in over the balcony (the same way O'Neill's bed was returned to Tao House in 1992 thanks to a letter from Honorary Foundation Board member Katherine Houghton Hepburn to Gumps requesting that the store return the bed to its rightful place.)  Gene's teak bed was, in fact, an old Chinese opium couch.

The O'Neills decided to call their new home Tao House in October of 1937.

For her own bedroom, Carlotta purchased a beautiful old carved teak bed from Gumps.  She chose blue silk for her bedroom, french provincial for the guest room, a Tang horse lamp from Yamanakes, from Gumps a lacquer desk, Manchurian chest, teak table, Chinese rug of Imperial yellow and blue symbols for the living room.

Carlotta bought an Italian bird bath for the patio from Sloane's.  It stands there today.

The O'Neills disliked the long book cases in the living room because they looked like a public library, so they filled on up with a sapphire blue mirror to go with the white stone walls, midnight blue ceilings, tiled floor, Chinese rug, and 18th century Chinese furniture.  On the opposite side of the room from the mirror was a long Coromandel screen the same size as the mirror.

In January of 1938 Gene had a black mirror installed between the windows of his bedroom.

They added "Rosie" the electric player piano to the breakfast room where Gene followed the war on a huge world map, and play his large record collection.

The swimming pool was completed, the garden planted, the Bendix washer arrived.

In August, blue glass was added to the guest room to compliment the murals of mountain mists.

A wooden walkway to the barn was constructed in October of1938.

Eugene wanted and got chickens - Bantams and Brahmas - along with a fine chicken house in which most people could live.

In the building of Tao House, it is clear that Eugene O'Neill had little or nothing to do with the building of it.  Much of the time he was ill with the tremor, prostate trouble, and a host of other ailments. It seems evident that O'Neill never fully recovered from the siege at Merritt Hospital.

Blemie's grave site at Tao House.

Even though not in good health, O'Neill managed to write the first draft of And Give Me Death, The Greed of the Meek, The Calms of Capricorn, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey into Night, Hughie, and A Moon for the Misbegotten in the seven years at Tao House.  Interestingly, the seven year Tao House period was the longest period of time that Eugene O'Neill ever lived in one place.  With a critical shortage of workers due to the war effort, the O'Neill's lost their cook and Freeman, their driver.  O'Neill had no way to get to and from his weekly physician appointments.  They were forced to sell Tao House and move to the Huntington Hotel in San Francisco, and then back to the east coast.  O'Neill would write no more.

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