On a Street Called Easy, in a Cottage Called Joye

Want to trade your Manhattan apartment — with its air-shaft views — for elegance, charm, and 45 closets? New York expats Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh couldn't resist the often hilarious challenge of restoring robber baron W.C. Whitney's 60-room hideaway in Aiken, S.C. It wasn't easy. But despite the Great Tile Trial, the Hunt for Whitney Silver, and a hapless crew headed by Mordia, the stylish work-gang boss with ''a haircut like the front end of a vintage car,'' the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors (Jackson Pollock) returned Joye Cottage to the days of its former glory, when Caruso warbled for the winter colony and Fred Astaire reprised Top Hat routines in the ballroom. Prose as well crafted as the mansion's heart-pine beams makes this ode to Joye and its colorful history an engrossing blueprint for anyone with a dollar — give or take half a million — and a dream. A