TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER 2019 133
Dave Brubeck spent long
hours rehearsing and
composing in the music
studio, which still houses
three of his pianos and
an organ. The tall upright
by the wall was designed
for him so he could stand
while playing, to relieve
stress on an old back
injury. Right: A photo of
Sergei Rachmaninoff.
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 Fran-
cisco 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.
Thorne had been part of the 1945 Case Study Houses program,
which enlisted architects after World War II to design family homes
using inexpensive, widely available materials. His Case House Number
26, a long rectangle with a glass wall that looked out over a hillside in
San Rafael, California, was admired but did not garner a lot of atten-
tion. The Brubecks’ Oakland house, however, made Thorne famous—
though not necessarily happy. He had little interest in working for
the high-profile clients who began calling. He moved to Hawaii and
dropped David from his name and began going by his given name,
Beverley. But Thorne had struck up a friendship with the Brubecks
(they met in 1949, when Brubeck was performing in Oakland at the
Burma Lounge), and he gladly agreed to take on the new project.