Changing New York; Patchin Place with Jefferson Market Court in Background
Patchin Place, off West 10th Street between Sixth and Greenwich Avenues, taken toward the back of the Place, up through the fire escapes and trees with the Jefferson Market Courthouse across the street.
Museum of the City of New YorkView of Patchin Place with Jefferson Market Courthouse in the background, November 24, 1937.
The houses along Patchin Place were built in the late 1840s, in close proximity to Jefferson Market and, later, the Jefferson Market Courthouse and Prison. Berenice Abbott’s photograph depicts the brick buildings lining Patchin Place, a single dead-end block off of West 10th Street, in 1937. At the time, the secluded side street was known as a popular spot for literary New Yorkers. Long-term residents included e.e. cummings, and Djuna Barnes, while Marlon Brando also stayed on the block for a short time.
Today, Patchin Place looks much like it did 80 years ago, with one notable exception. Rather than poets and writers, the street’s seclusion has attracted a different kind of privacy-seeking professionals: therapists.
Urban Archive