John Coltrane bought his first house, at 1511 N. 33rd Street in Philadelphia’s Strawberry Mansion neighborhood, along the eastern edge of Fairmount Park, in the spring of 1952. (A former Navy seaman, he’d secured a loan through the G.I. Bill.) He lived there, creating some of his earliest known work, until 1958, when he moved to New York.
The house stayed in the Coltrane family long after the saxophonist and composer’s untimely death in 1967. Ravi Coltrane — John’s second son with Alice Coltrane, born in ‘65 — recalls visiting his grandmother there as a child, and walking the short distance to the Philadelphia Zoo. But the fate of the house has long been uncertain, due to a history of contested ownership, and over the years its condition has deteriorated in plain sight. “I assumed the house would always be here,” Ravi said last Friday afternoon. “But without the proper care and support, these homes can vanish.”
Ravi was speaking at The Yard on John Coltrane Street, a community space that opened last fall in what had been a vacant lot, a few doors down from 1511 N. 33rd. The afternoon had been reserved for a public event to declare a new era and purpose for the John Coltrane House, and to clear the decks for a yearlong John Coltrane centennial celebration in 2026. The event, which also featured a young combo from the Lovett Hines Global Creative Arts Initiative, and remarks from Valerie Gay, the executive director of Creative Philadelphia, marked some welcome resolution in a cultural saga.
“There were some issues with the ownership of the home,” Ravi explained that evening, speaking from the stage at Solar Myth. “Those issues have been resolved. And now we’re excited and very re-energized to maintain this very historic home so it can exist forever — as a symbol of one great American artist that can show all of us the possibilities of human achievement.”
The issues in question arose after Coltrane’s cousin Mary Alexander — Cousin Mary, as she was immortalized in song — sold the house in 2004, without due authority. (She had life rights to the property, but not ownership.) She died in 2019, and it was only last year that the Coltrane family officially reclaimed ownership of the house, after some litigation and a settlement. Then the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, announced that the house will be the first beneficiary of an initiative called the Descendants and Family Stewardship. The AACHAF has partnered with the Coltrane estate and Ars Nova Workshop to envision a future for the site, with the intention to open it to the public.
“To have all of these organizations, and this merging of all of them coming together for the right reason — it underscores what John Coltrane represents to Philadelphia, and to the world,” attests J. Michael Harrison, host of The Bridge, who was present for Friday’s announcement. “I mean, that house is mythical, in some respects. But to position it to take on a grander stature as a global destination, that’s what feels so special.”
Also in the realm of special was the performance Ravi gave at Solar Myth on Friday night, as a benefit for the Coltrane House. It had been billed as a trio concert, but featured a quartet, with Gadi Lehavi on piano, Anthony Tidd on electric bass guitar and Tim Angulo on drums. Unusually for Ravi, the set consisted entirely of his father’s compositions, beginning with “Olé,” the title track of a 1961 album for Atlantic.
The set proceeded with a similar selection of mostly deeper cuts from the Coltrane oeuvre. “Wise One,” from the classic 1964 Impulse! album Crescent, set up a marvelous showcase for Ravi’s tenor, with an occasional spine-tingling evocation of his father’s phraseology. “Miles’ Mode,” from the ‘62 album simply titled Coltrane, got an M-BASE makeover, with Ravi playing his sopranino sax over a slanted funk groove in 9/4 meter. “Central Park West,” which he played on soprano, simmered with placid purpose, its rippling lyricism reinforced with post-fusion energies.
“Sometimes people say, ‘John Coltrane was from another planet,’” Ravi said at one point, eliciting an appreciative laugh from the crowd. “No, he was from North Carolina. But he left when he was 19, and came right here to Philadelphia.”
In this city, he added, Coltrane progressed from “a young man with visions of doing great things within music to a visionary who changed music. But he didn’t do it in a vacuum. There was a community involved, obviously — all the musicians that he came up with here in Philadelphia, from Benny Golson and Jimmy Heath to all the musicians who ended up working with him ultimately, McCoy Tyner in particular. A lot of those musicians were gathering at that house on North 33rd Street. My grandmother would make poundcake for them. It's the same poundcake that I used to eat at 12 or 13.”
That sense of history and legacy was never felt more tangibly than in the set’s final selection: “Giant Steps,” a landmark of modern jazz that John Coltrane developed, like a particle physicist splitting the atom, in his house on North 33rd Street. Ravi eased into the theme in a distinctly contemporary fashion, processing his tenor through an electronic effect that harmonized each tone, as he traced the form in a free tempo.
When the beat kicked in, it was surprisingly set in triplet polyrhythm, with Tidd’s quarter notes moving fast in a forward cycle. About five minutes in, the band almost imperceptibly gear-shifted into a hard-charging 4/4 swing, with Coltrane darting and weaving through the song’s famously intricate harmonic form. Lehavi followed with a piano solo full of rampaging erudition, eliciting cheers from the capacity crowd.
The moment was both rousing and resonant — a joyous celebration of a jazz legend and one of his signature achievements, with an unforced, unspoken connection to both place and patrilineage. For anyone who’d spent the afternoon actively considering that legacy, it was also an affirmation of what’s yet to come. “Giant Steps,” indeed.
