Coltrane Home to Become Museum

Back in March we reported that saxophonist-luminary John Coltrane’s former home in the Dix Hills neighborhood of Huntington, N.Y.—the place where Coltrane wrote his masterpiece A Love Supreme—was in danger of being demolished, and that a local jazz fan had taken on a preservation effort as a kind of jazz crusade. The Associated Press reported Monday that the house will be saved from demolition and turned into a Coltrane museum.

On April 20 the Huntington Town Council held a public hearing and decided that the former Coltrane residence should be designated a historic landmark. Susan Berland, a Huntington council member, told the New York Times that “the house absolutely qualifies for historic designation. John Coltrane lived there and wrote his best work there.”

Some current Dix Hills residents are not convinced that Coltrane’s residence in the house, which lasted from 1964 to 1967, qualifies it for landmark designation. “So he lived there two and a half years while he did his best work,” Ron Kahn, treasurer of the civic association, told the Times. “Should we landmark every house Billy Joel lived in on Long Island?” That’s probably not the first time Coltrane has been compared to Joel, but it’s probably the first time it’s ever happened where the person who made the comparison was sober. Many Dix Hills locals treasure their quiet community and fear that turning the home into a museum will increase traffic and noise in the area.

The town council seeks to fairly compensate the property’s current owner, Ash Agrawal, a developer who had planned to split the acreage into three lots. Berland said the council would offer Agrawal “fair market value” for the property.

A complete chronicle of the situation can be found at the Web site www.dixhills.com. The site compiles past media coverage and recent news, and has pictures of the house’s exterior and interior.

Originally Published April 28, 2004