A phone call from his sister arrived that August, and Gene Paul — freshly 82 — picked up fully expecting to hear the familiar strains of a birthday song. Her question shifted to the photograph of the house. "They tore it down," she said — and he needed no further explanation: the house in Mahwah, New Jersey, where their father, Les Paul, had spent the years from 1952 until his passing in 2009.
That location served as the workshop where Les Paul developed multitrack recording techniques, refined his electric-guitar designs, and laid the sonic groundwork on which contemporary rock music would come to rest — a legacy now at the centre of a property dispute that has drawn sharp public reaction since demolition plans became known. Relatives and associates have directed blame toward the Les Paul Foundation and its head, Michael Braunstein, the musician-inventor's former manager, over what they describe as a financially motivated decision to sell the home. Gene Paul, viewing photographs of the site posted to Facebook, told reporters the experience left him shaken, and that the responses beneath the images — asking how the Foundation could have allowed the property to reach that state — compounded his distress.
Reported friction between the family and the foundation draws on more than a breakdown in communication alone, with observers noting that additional layers of dispute appear to be at play.
Around the age of 15, Gene Paul relocated to his father's home and not long afterward took a place in the band his father led — later recalling that a father owning a recording studio, crafting his own guitar, developing the multitrack tape machine, touring as a performer, and producing records all struck him at the time as entirely ordinary. As a boy, he wound pickup coils beside his father during guitar-building sessions and pulled on tall boots before heading out into the vegetation surrounding the dome-shaped, futuristic property — necessary protection against the rattlesnakes that moved through the grounds — a home he would later recall as one that stood apart from anything else he had known.
Tension had marked the dynamic between Gene Paul and Braunstein for years — a rift that took hold around the time Les Paul died from pneumonia-related complications in 2009, a period Gene Paul describes as one in which communication between Braunstein and the family broke down. Following Les Paul's passing, the woman he had been with romantically took up residence in the home, honouring an arrangement he had put in place beforehand.
An offer from a buyer with the means to preserve the property — drawing on comparisons to Rudy Van Gelder's maintained studio in Englewood Cliffs and the restored home once shared by John and Alice Coltrane in New York — reportedly did not move forward to acceptance. Neither Braunstein nor the foundation provided any answers to the questions put to them.
Late in 2024, after the woman who had shared the property with Les Paul moved out due to deteriorating health that had made living there on her own no longer viable, Mahwah Mayor James Wysocki entered the house for the first time in roughly two decades. Wysocki noted that the property had already been deteriorating while Les Paul was still alive, and described finding the structure in a state of considerable disrepair — roof openings that exposed the interior to open sky, along with evidence that rattlesnakes and at least one bear had taken up residence inside — an account he offered despite his background as a former law enforcement officer.
A basement flood around 2002 accelerated the building's decline, and Wysocki described the demolition as painful yet unavoidable. The property listed in July and changed hands within 19 days at a sale price of $990,000. A family friend, JJ Whitney, noted that the home held a place in rock and roll history, while Gene Paul took to Facebook to characterise what had happened as more than mere incompetence. The structure was taken down without warning and without any path to recovery.
Two probate lawyers — Kenneth Vercammen and Christine Matus — reviewed a copy of Les Paul's 1995 will and concluded that the foundation had acted within its legal authority over the property. Matus noted that certain assets had been transferred to the foundation, leaving its trustees and directors free to take whatever steps they judged necessary to advance its stated mission. Matus added that legacy planning tends to carry emotional weight, that allowing the property to fall into disrepair ahead of any sale would reflect poorly on the foundation, and that open communication with the family and other interested parties would serve everyone's interests.
Rather than granting an interview, Braunstein directed attention to a foundation social media statement disputing characterisations that Les Paul's legacy had been erased, that its stewardship represented an unforgivable failure, or that physical evidence of his work had been lost, with the statement pointing instead to other preservation efforts underway.
Efforts to document and address the property's past have involved Wysocki working alongside its new owners. The developer's blueprint for the property includes plans to preserve and restore the acoustic echo chambers in the basement, incorporate reclaimed timber sourced from the original structure, and dedicate a room to memorabilia — though access to those features would be limited to whoever purchases the site.
Gene Paul indicated that the family had long held out hope that Braunstein would one day reach out to them about gathering for a farewell, and that such a moment was something they had all been expecting. No record of the event exists. Gene Paul raised the prospect that demolition, not preservation, had been imminent — with equipment used to clear away both the building and the record of what it once represented.
