On a Street Called Easy, in a Cottage Called Joye [Hardcover]

Gregory White Smith (Author), Steven W. Naifeh (Author), Daniel Baxter (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1996

The comical memoirs of a three-year struggle to restore an old house that had leaks, falling plaster, no heating or air-conditioning systems, and nineteenth-century plumbing, recounts the authors' adventures with new neighbors, merchants, and friends in a small South Carolina town.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fed up with their dark, cramped apartment in Manhattan, Pulitzer Prize winners Smith and Naifeh (for Jackson Pollack: An American Saga) dreamed of living in a palace and found it in a Sotheby catalogue for a million-plus dollars they didn't have. But they made a lucky deal, raised the money, spent three years renovating the 60-room "cottage" in Aiken, South Carolina-built for William C. Whitney-and became so accustomed to its vastness that they considered adding another room. They describe with verve the problems in restoring this white elephant, their experiences with local help and local society; and their delight in the gossip about the high life that centered around Whitney and this house at the turn of the century is contagious. The street it's on really is called Easy and the cottage really is named Joye. For reasons unexplained, Smith and Naifeh plan to donate their dream palace to the Juilliard School as a retreat for musicians; one can imagine that it may, after all, be too big for two people.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

It's a long way from apartment living in New York City to buying, rehabilitating, and inhabiting a 60-room house on Easy Street in Aiken, South Carolina. But what can you do when you're in love? When the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographers of Jackson Pollock (Jackson Pollock: An American Saga, LJ 9/1/89) first saw Joye Cottage, built by robber baron William C. Whitney in the late 19th century, they knew they had to buy it. This is a warm and lighthearted account of the trials and tribulations of purchasing and renovating a 100-year-old house with 20,000 square feet of living space (including 18 bedrooms, 12 baths, formal gardens, and a swimming pool), not to mention a leaky roof, literally tons of falling plaster, faulty plumbing, and more. Interesting bits on the history of the Gilded Age and the Whitney family scandals are interwoven with the problems of getting good help and finding decent restaurants. Ultimately, this cannot be compared with Peter Mayle's Provence books or John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (LJ 1/94); the narrative drags at the end, and the book as a whole could have used a little judicious editing to eliminate repetition. Still, this is an appropriate purchase for large libraries.
Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 321 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T); 1 edition (May 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316597058
• ISBN-13: 978-0316597050
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #965,119 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THOROUGHLY ENTERTAINING, August 17, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: On a Street Called Easy, in a Cottage Called Joye (Hardcover)

ON A STREET CALLED EASY,IN A COTTAGE CALLED JOYE BY GREGORY WHITE SMITH AND STEVEN NAIFEH IS A VERY ENTERTAING HUMOROUS TALE OF THE ADVENTURES OF RESTORING A PROPERTY IN AIKEN ,S.C. THE HISTOTY OF THE PROPERTY IS INTERWOVEN WITH THE DETAILS OF THE ADVENTURES AND MISADVENTURES OF THE RESTORATION. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK.IT MAKES YOU LAUGH OUT LOUD..NOT ALWAYS EASY IN THESE TIMES. IT IS TRUELY A JOYE TO READ!!!!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An easy, entertaining read, March 11, 2002

By 

"gryphonisle" (SAN FRANCISCO!) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On a Street Called Easy, in a Cottage Called Joye (Hardcover)

"On A Street Called Easy, in a Cottage called Joye" is an easy and entertaining read, with short chapters perfect for the ride on the subway, or a break between tasks. A close parallel to "A Year In Provence", which is referenced by the authors, the story is essentially a humorous take on the gentry's lament "you can't get good help these days", but the biggest difference is that while "A Year..." is heavily slanted towards food, "A Street..." is almost entirely about the travails of renovating a wreck. It is after all, set in the deep (if it ain't fried, it ain't cooked)south, this is NOT Provence.
The "true" story follows its two, pullitzer prize winning authors as they leave their dark, viewless, Manhattan condo and set out for Aiken, S.C., where they've bought(for quite a bit less than the original million+ asking price) a sixty room mansion built in 1897 by WC Whitney, as the gilded age began to flicker to a close. Through neglect, the house is an absolute mess. The crew hired to bring it back to its glory is pretty much a mess as well. From the holdover-joint-toking hippie that makes off with the only, working-order copper piping to sell for scrap, to the tile man who wants to be paid for time he'd requested to hang out (doing nothing)while the tile arrived, to the maid who spends all day dusting 3 rooms, only to be discovered sleeping whenever the bosses are away. You can't leave this crew a for a second, as they discover towards the end, in a scene that will leave wine lovers heart broken. The problem is, as with "A year in Provence", the owners seem to have a bottomless pocketbook, and always seem to have a check to write to cover whatever goes wrong. And EVERYTHING goes wrong. This eventually takes away from the believability, especially when combined with the patience of Job that the two men seem to display, endlessly, towards what are essentially ne'er do wells and lowlifes posing as contractors. Ah, well. You do learn a bit about the Whitneys, the house in its better days, Aiken in its better days, and the more recent days. All in all a worthwhile read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Growing up in Aiken, August 19, 2009

By 

John J. Trinkl - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On a street called Easy, in a cottage called Joye (Hardcover)

I grew up in Aiken, S.C. and this book is a wonderful snapshot of part of that town's interesting history. My father was a butler to one of the "Winter Colony" residents which are mentioned in the book. He liked the place so much he decided to retire there. The book is a fun read and gives an overview of most of the different strata which make it a unique place: the old time residents who go back for decades; the "Winter Colony" people (many of whose children and grand children still live there); the engineers, scientists and other professionals who inundated the town in 1955; Blacks; local workers. There is not much mention of Aiken's middle class--reading the book you might think everyone was either very rich, a redneck or a Black servant. But this is not a sociological study but a memoir of the authors' efforts to resuscitate a dilapidaded old mansion. Anyone has done any kind of major remodel on their house will find find their own problems here, writ hilariously large.