Tennessee Williams in New Orleans — 632 St. Peter

In 1938 a young writer arrived in New Orleans and rented a room at 722 Toulouse Street in the French Quarter. Tennessee Williams wrote his first New York-produced play at 632 St. Peter Street — the address a plaque now marks. New Orleans provided the heat, decay, and desperation that powered *A Streetcar Named Desire* and *Suddenly Last Summer*. Williams called the city "the last frontier of Bohemia" and returned throughout his life. The Historic New Orleans Collection acquired the largest private collection of Tennessee Williams materials anywhere in the world in 2001. The collection includes manuscripts of *A Streetcar Named Desire* and *The Glass Menagerie*, playbills, signed first editions, unpublished letters, and photographs. There are notes on the filming of *The Rose Tattoo*, an operatic version of *Summer and Smoke*, a film script for a western, and a prose-poem to lover Frank Merlo. The Collection publishes the *Tennessee Williams Annual Review*, the only journal devoted exclusively to his work. The plaque is on the building at 632 St. Peter Street. It is a private residence — view from the sidewalk.