The Fox Theatre: The Man Upstairs
He helped save the theatre and lived under its dome. Then its board voted to end his lease.
Listen to this place’s story in Peplos.
How the story begins
At 83, weeks after a stroke, Joe Patten was told to leave the building he had saved. His home was a duplex beneath the dome of the Fox. He had made it out of empty offices in 1979, at his own cost, with the work counted as his rent, on a lease for life, which two-thirds of the board could vote to end. He had first come here in 1946, and found the great pipe organ not working. In 1974 Southern Bell, the telephone company, meant to tear the theatre down for an office tower.
The rest is in the app. Peplos plays the full story when you reach the place. You can also listen ahead of time.
Visiting
The Fox Theatre, Peachtree Street at Ponce de Leon Avenue, Midtown. A working theatre. The Fox sells guided tours of the interior through its website; check its schedule. The story works from the sidewalk.
Sources
- Pollstar/AP: Phantom of the Fox fights to stay in apartment, 2010
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution: How Atlanta saved the Fox Theatre, 2025
- Patch: Phantom of the Fox dies, 2016
- The New York Times obituary, reprinted on Rick on Theater, 2016
- New Georgia Encyclopedia: Fox Theatre
- Fox Theatre: Tours
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