No 7 Eccles St - James Joyce Tour

7 Eccles Street was a row house in Dublin, Ireland. It was the home of Leopold Bloom, protagonist of the novel Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce. The house was demolished in 1967, and the site is now occupied by the Mater Private Hospital. Ulysses, describes one day in the life of Leopold Bloom, 16 June 1904. Bloom is an advertising salesman. He makes tea and toast for his wife, Molly, then leaves the house to get a kidney for his own breakfast. He leaves the door ajar, because he had left his latch key in his trousers in the "creaky wardrobe" and does not want to disturb his wife. When he retires to bed in 7 Eccles Street that evening he has to remove crumbs of potted meat from the bedclothes, presumably left there by Molly and her lover. Joyce first saw the row of three-story brick houses when he visited his friend John Francis Byrne at 7 Eccles Street in 1909. Byrne was a friend of Joyce from their college days, a journalist and amateur numerologist. Joyce visited him one day in 1909 in a very emotional state over a rumor about Nora Barnacle's infidelities. Byrne was able to calm him down and he stayed for dinner and then for the night. Before the house was completely demolished John Ryan, a Dublin artist and writer who had organized the first Bloomsday in 1954, managed to rescue the front door and the surrounding brickwork. He installed it in his pub, the Bailey, a rendezvous for Dublin writers. In 1995 the door was moved to the James Joyce Centre on North Great George's Street