LIVING SPACES
Against all odds, Alice Coltrane’s meditation rugs remain vivid gold, scarlet, and green. Since she sold the home she’d shared with her husband John in Dix Hills, New York, in 1973, the place has been infested with mold, raided for copper wire, and overtaken by wild animals. Even sandblasted and stripped to the studs, though, the ’50s abode still retains some of Alice’s chakra-colored decor. Poking out of drab construction wrapping, the rugs’ vibrancy is impossible to ignore.
True, the house is just a shell right now. But they’re symbolic, these flashes of color against brown and beige. A gaggle of selfless volunteers have tamed the house’s surrounding overgrowth, planted flowers out front, and installed indoor plumbing. The Coltrane Home’s president, Steve Fulgoni, foresees a future where the house is an artist’s retreat and educational center. Really, the potential is incalculable—if the necessary money rolls into their nonprofit.
The Coltrane Home speaks volumes about the houses once inhabited by American jazz and creative music heroes. Neither knocked-down nor functional, the place sits in the middle of the spectrum between neglect and restoration. On the one extreme, Louis Armstrong’s house has been painstakingly maintained in a historically intact state, used as a museum and events center. On the other, Buddy Bolden’s is a moldering mess in need of rescue.
