[9] E. E. Cummings moved in three years later; he wrote that "the topfloorback room at 4 Patchin Place ... meant Safety & Peace & the truth of Dreaming & the bliss of Work".
In the foundations of this fallen Bastille, from where of so many Sundays we heard the imprisoned Baggages sing about heaven, is an iron clutcher with a dragonish dew-lap scooping earth and hissing with a steamy vibrant roar.
She had lived in Greenwich Village in the 1910s and had been in the audience when residents organized a performance of William Butler Yeats's play The King's Threshold in the courtyard of Patchin Place as a war benefit, but had spent most of the 1920s and 30s in Europe.
[14] Community activists, led by future mayor Ed Koch, succeeded in saving Patchin Place, and in 1969 it became landmarked[8] with the creation of the Greenwich Village Historic District.
[1] Though she complained about "writing amid the roaring of plumbing, howling of downstairs dog, thumping of small child on elephant's feet",[15] Barnes remained in residence until her death in 1982.
[16] Usage has changed, however: the same privacy that had once attracted writers and artists also appealed to psychotherapists, who began to locate there in the 1990s, transforming the street into what one psychologist called "therapy row".