House Music

In the early ’60s, jazz great Dave Brubeck and his wife packed up and moved from California to Connecticut, where they built a modernist masterpiece out of steel and stone. Fifty years later it hasn’t missed a beat.

- Wendy Goodman

Dave and Iola Brubeck were already living in one masterpiece of modern design when they started thinking about building a second.

It was the 1950s, and the jazz legend was touring constantly with his band, the Dave Brubeck Quartet. “The whole group would pile into my dad’s Kaiser Vagabond, drive across the country, and play, play, play,” says the couple’s third son, Chris Brubeck. Most of the gigs were on the East Coast, which meant Dave was away from his home in Oakland, California, for weeks at a time. “Mom and Dad started this exercise, ‘What if we lived on the East Coast? How much more time would you have at home with your family?’”

The answer: a lot.

In 1961 they bought a steep lot overlooking two streams in Wilton, Connecticut, and asked Beverley David Thorne, the architect who had built their Oakland home, to design a house that would make the most of the topography. Thorne had faced a similar challenge at the couple’s precipitous and rocky California property, where he used metal I-beams to cantilever the structure out over the slope. Heartwood House, as it was named, had sweeping views of San Francisco Bay and was lauded for its dramatic exterior. Bethlehem Steel featured “Dave Brubeck and his ‘Tree House’” in an advertisement touting the strength of its beams. Ed Sullivan filmed the quartet in the living room for a segment on his show.