Joy Homestead

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In the middle of the house at the rear is what is known as the inner room and out of it in back of the parlor at the north end of the house is a tiny bedroom. The inner room can be entered from either the parlor of the keeping room and. Like those two room rooms has a fireplace.


Next to the inner room at the south and opening from the keeping room, is the borning room, room so called because it was here that the mother of family usually bore her children, where it was comparatively warm, handy for supplies for her comfort at that time and where she could oversee the running of her household during the hours of accouchement.


The house was framed and the corner posts jut out in each corner, but the rough beams with their broad axe marks are concealed by finished board casings and the walls are plastered.


The lathes, where repairs have exposed them, are of early type being, not individual units, but rather boards of varying width which have been split down from first one end and then the other to within a short distance from the end of the board. Then, fan like, the board is spread open and the loose ends nailed to uprights. Between the open slits this formed a layer of rather course shell plaster mixed with cow hair forced to form what is known as a key layer. Sometimes in the early homes but a single layer was used and sometimes as many as three layers would be applied, the one on top being made of finer sand and less hair with shell for a smoother surface.


Besides these basic rooms there is an ell on the Joy Homestead at the south end of the house. There was no ‘toother' in the foundation, that is no stone that jutted out from the main foundation to partly support the ell portion, if it had been planned in the beginning.


A window boarded up between the keeping room and ell would indicate that the ell was added to the main portion. An outside type of door on that wall used as an inside door would tend to corroborate this deduction and the frame showed weathering.


Another chimney and second oven in the ell could mean it was perhaps a summer kitchen. The mystery and the plot thickened as the men working at the Homestead uncovered these significant bits of evidence.


The mantels in this room and the keeping room are of particular interest and all quite unusual. The apron under the shelf is not a single wide wooden panel but is made up of narrow wooden panels of plaster. It was a pleasing surprise to find, that identical type of mantel in the Governor Stephen Hopkins house, now restored in Providence next to the court house. Two other houses, both on Scituate Avenue also have, this mantel style.


Upstairs there are two master chambers (all upstairs rooms are called chambers) at either of the house. The one at the north has a fireplace and closet, a most unusual feature in an early house. Most clothes were hung on a "hanging strip". A narrow fitted with wooden pegs, and attached the length of the wall behind the bed. There is also a closet out of the upper hall and stairs that lead to a third floor unfinished garret.


There are two narrow chambers at the back of the house opening from the master chambers, and from the south master chamber there is access to the ‘ell attic' which is mentioned in the inventory of one of Samuel Joy's sons.


Of the distinctive features on the second floor one is the floor into the north master bed chamber at the head of the stairs. Never painted for some reason like the rest of the house, it has a lovely brown satiny patina, something to treasure.


Red is the color we have chosen as the final color for the house on the outside it being one of the earlier colors used when people decided was not a sign of ostentation but a preservative. White paint was a more sophisticated later developed. To corroborate our choice, evidence of red paint was found on a casing under the eaves and in one of the old inventories Thomas Joy mentions contents of the "red shop."