James Leo Herlihy, author of Midnight Cowboy and Season of the Witch, bought the house at 709 Baker Lane in 1969 for six thousand dollars. He visited Key West for the first time in 1956 to work on rewrites for a play. "The town excited me too much," he said of that visit. "I spent all my time walking the streets. The place was mysterious, funky, indescribably exotic. The town had the kind of beauty that did not know about itself: it just was."