Djuna Barnes, born January 12, lived her final 42 years at 5 Patchin Place in New York City, across the street from E. E. Cummings.

A novelist, poet, and playwright, Barnes became friends with Marianne Moore in the 1920s, when both were young and Moore worked at NYPL's Hudson Park Library. I can imagine Barnes visiting Moore in our children’s room.

Here she is, speaking about Greenwich Village. What she says is still true, almost 100 years later:

New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city where you can hardly find a typical American.

After all, it is not where one washes one’s neck that counts but where one moistens one’s throat.

"Greenwich Village as It Is," Pearson’s Magazine (October 1916).