United Nations Plaza is shown as Truman Capote’s apartment address and a recurring point of return in visits recorded in 1978. The diary gives the home significance through what happens inside it: it is both a lived-in domestic space, marked by damage and redecorating, and a place where artistic ambitions and the press’s portrait of Capote come into view.

Capote’s Apartment as a Working Space

During one visit, Capote brought the diarist to his apartment at United Nations Plaza after lunch. He had redecorated, but his bulldog had torn buttons and fringes from the furniture. The room’s disorder sat alongside an attempt to make a new artistic opportunity: Bob MacBride showed cut-paper sculptures and sought help finding a gallery. The diarist offered to arrange a lunch with Leo Castelli after Castelli returned to town, with Capote’s presence intended to make the meeting appealing.

The apartment also became a setting for a proposed theatrical collaboration. The diarist suggested recording Capote for a Play-a-Day project in which he might perform every part, including his grandmother. The idea connected the home’s private conversation to a possible creative undertaking, though the diary records the proposal rather than a completed production.

Visits, Reading, and Public Image

On another visit, Capote and MacBride were at the apartment with advance copies of a New York Times magazine profile of Capote. The article’s accompanying photograph struck the diarist as resembling Capote’s mother rather than Capote. Its account linked his attraction to men with wives and children to the family life he had not had, and mentioned his boyfriend John O’Shea. MacBride, who fit the article’s description, was present as Capote read the piece for about an hour; the diarist then saw more of MacBride’s artwork in the bedroom.

In the building lobby, Capote held up the photograph for the elevator attendants and called attention to the profile. When he objected to its use of the word decline, he pointed to how much he was written about as evidence of his standing. The episode makes United Nations Plaza a threshold between the private apartment and a public identity shaped by print: Capote carried the magazine’s image from his home into the building’s shared space and challenged its characterization there.

A Recurring Point of Return

On July 9, 1978, the diarist went to United Nations Plaza for dinner after Capote called to say he missed him. The diarist brought eight tapes and a camera, and recorded Capote’s phone call to Jack Dunphy, his boyfriend of thirty years. Afterward, they went to Antolotti’s for pizza and drinks; the diarist then walked Capote home, supporting him as they made their way back. The apartment address thus anchors a sequence extending beyond its rooms, from recorded conversation to dinner out and the return home.

The diary offers no architectural description of United Nations Plaza. Its portrait is instead built from repeated actions and small domestic particulars: the damaged furniture, the artwork brought out for a visitor, the article read at length, and the lobby encounter with the photograph. Together, these details present the address as both a private residence and a setting where Capote’s artistic plans, relationships, and public reputation repeatedly intersect.