According to a February 19, 2021 New York Times real estate item that quickly caught the attention of Travels with Charley fans, the modest home in Sag Harbor, New York from which John Steinbeck and his poodle started their 1960 road trip can be yours for just under $18 million—more than Steinbeck and his wife Elaine paid in 1955, but less than the price of comparable waterfront properties for sale in tonier Long Island communities like the Hamptons. Steinbeck’s lifelong attachment to small, secluded spaces extended to the tiny writing cabin that he built on the 1.8-acre site and named Joyous Garde, after the Arthurian legend he learned to love as a boy. The online version of the Times real estate story included this comment from Bill Steigerwald, the Pittsburgh journalist who visited Sag Harbor (the venue for Steinbeck’s last novel, The Winter of Our Discontent) before setting out to discover the actual the driving route—and expose the narrative liberties—taken by John Steinbeck on his unsentimental journey “in search of America.”
“In 2010, exactly 50 years after Steinbeck and dog Charley left on the road trip around the USA that became Travels with Charley, I left his Sag Harbor house and retraced his route for my 100 percent nonfiction road book/expose, Dogging Steinbeck. I was kindly allowed to trespass on the property by the man who took care of it and I shot some video. I’ve never been confused with Steven Spielberg, and Peter Coyote was otherwise engaged, and I had no sound man . . . .”
Photo of John Steinbeck’s Sag Harbor property, by Gavin Zeigler for Sotheby’s International Realty, courtesy of the New York Times. Photo of Bill Steigerwald courtesy of truthaboutcharley.com.
About Administrative Team
Some of us when seeing this NY Times article yesterday jumped on the issue of losing this Steinbeck home to an urban developer that will tear down the house and build a 6,000 + sq. ft. modern house on this sacred property.
We have talked to the Mayor of Sag Harbor and some council people about their interest in saving the property for posterity. They are on board. My concern is that when you lose a physical manifestation of a life, you lose the ability to fully understand the person who once inhabited that geographic space. With Doc’s Lab having been preserved into perpetuity, and the restoration of the Western Flyer almost complete, it is imperative that the Sag Harbor property and home of Steinbeck be preserved. It is going to be a challenge, but in the 2 days since the NY Times article we have made significant progress. Two elements loom before us, time and cost–with time being the critical variable. There has been no offer on the property yet, but the real estate market in Sag Harbor is red hot so “time” is our biggest issue. We are organizing to raise the money and would welcome a follow up write up on Will’s web site as we progress to assist in defining a network of folks that have the resources, collectively, to buy this property..
Can you imagine the Wester Flyer with the Steinbeck scholars on board, leaving Monterey sailing through the Panama Canal and arriving at Sag Harbor, an eastern Steinbeck center. I can!!
Jim