Tao House

 house, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, Monterey Colonial (architecture), U.S. National Historic Landmark

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The Tao House was home to American Nobel Prize playwright Eugene O'Neill and his wife Carlotta Monterey O'Neill. Eugene is held by many critics to be the central figure in the coming of age of American drama. At this house, the playwright did some of his last and best works. Eugene and his wife named the house "Tao" meaning "the right way of life" of the Taoist faith.

Here Eugene wrote The Iceman Cometh (1939), A Moon for the Misbegotten (1943), and completed several plays — including A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions. Finally, O'Neill here wrote the autobiographical masterpiece, Long Day's Journey Into Night---"a tale of old sorrow, written in tears and blood".

The hardships imposed by World War II, and the playwright's growing need of medical attention, forced the O'Neills to give up Tao House late in 1943. The house was saved from demolition in the early 1970s by the Eugene O’Neill Foundation through several fundraising efforts. Tao House was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1971, a National Historic Site in 1976, and passed into the management of the National Park Service in 1980.

The Tao House is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as # 71000137.

www.nps.gov/euon/