Thursday, October 1, 2026
Suffolk County has been the home of many literary giants. The number is unusual for any area. It includes Walt Whitman, James Fenimore Cooper, Kurt Vonnegut, James Jones, Truman Capote, Betty Friedan, Edward Albee, E.L. Doctorow, Joseph Heller, Lanford Wilson, Joe Pintauro, Terence McNally, Colson Whitehead, Peter Matthiessen . . . and John Steinbeck.
And now, you can get an extraordinary insight into Steinbeck.
The house in Sag Harbor in which Steinbeck and his wife, Elaine, lived has been preserved. That’s thanks to donations to the Sag Harbor Partnership, the participation of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas (Elaine’s alma mater), $750,000 from New York state, $11.2 million from the Town of Southampton’s Community Preservation Fund, and individual contributions from folks in Sag Harbor.
You can go on a free Saturday tour of the 1.8 acres of property overlooking Sag Harbor Cove, and visit inside the house, too, on Holiday Open House Weekends. My wife and I took the tour on the Memorial Day weekend.
Among the many features of the property is Steinbeck’s charming little six-sided gazebo, his writing studio. He named it, with a sign, Joyous Garde, after Sir Lancelot’s castle in the legend of King Arthur. Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his renowned novel “The Grapes of Wrath.” Among his many other books were “East of Eden,” “Of Mice and Men,” “The Pearl,” “The Red Pony,” “The Winter of Our Discontent,” “Tortilla Flat,” Cannery Row” and “Travels with Charley: In Search of America” — which begins in Sag Harbor.
He hung out with friends in the village, which in recent years has featured the John Steinbeck Waterfront Park. In the 1960s, he was a founder and honorary chairman of Sag Harbor’s Old Whaler’s Festival (now known as HarborFest). We lived in Sayville back then, and as a reporter for the Long Island Press, I went to Sag Harbor and interviewed Steinbeck on a festival day.
He and Elaine lived in the Sag Harbor house from 1955 until his death in 1968. Elaine continued to use the house until she died in 2003.
Our docent for the tour was Lori Raimondo, who is highly knowledgeable about Steinbeck. She told us how Sag Harbor reminded him of Monterey, Calif., on the Pacific Ocean south of San Francisco, where he had earlier lived. Monterey was a working-class waterfront town, like Sag Harbor in those days.
Raimondo said that Steinbeck saw the house while looking at another one nearby, but was told it wasn’t for sale. He went over and knocked on the door, anyway, and the couple who owned it said they were just putting it up for sale.
In the house, Steinbeck’s creativity — and humor — were apparent immediately. Raimondo pointed out a mobile hanging in the living room, which, she noted, Steinbeck constructed from the spokes of an umbrella. Adjacent was a cozy kitchen area.
A main feature of the living room is a fireplace made with large stones, especially big in the context of the small house. Originally, Raimondo explained, a collection of rifles hung above the fireplace, and she showed us photos of them.
In a hallway that led down to a bedroom were many photos, including one of Steinbeck receiving the Nobel Prize. Up what is now a metal circular staircase — which replaced a ladder, Raimondo said — was a loft for the Steinbecks’ two sons, Thomas and John.
Outside, we visited a small workshop building that, Raimondo told us, Steinbeck originally thought he could use for writing. But he found there were too many diversions in it. Then it was on to the simple Joyous Garde, which had room for only a small desk and a chair. It was a tranquil place for Steinbeck to write, with a serene view of the waters of Sag Harbor Cove through its windows.
To arrange to take the tour, go to steinbeckhouse.org/visit. “There are two options for visiting,” it advises. One is a “regular Saturday visit,” on dates that are listed. The other is holiday open house weekends, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays on which both the grounds and the home are open.
Take the tour. It is immensely worthwhile.
Karl Grossman has been an investigative reporter in a variety of media for more than 50 years. He is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York at Old Westbury.
