NEW YORK — They called him the Phantom — the Phantom of the Fox.
Like his well-known Parisian counterpart, he lived for decades in an ornate theater. He had intimate knowledge of every light, every rope, every walkway, and every catacomb in his cavernous Eden.
But unlike the storied figure said to haunt the Paris Opera, this Phantom was real — an ardent, somewhat solitary, supremely gifted man named Joe Patten. Until shortly before his death April 7, at 89, Mr. Patten had lived in rococo splendor in a sprawling apartment in Atlanta's historic Fox Theater.
Over the course of his long love affair with the Fox, Mr. Patten, its technical director from 1974 until his retirement in 2001, became as revered a fixture of the city's cultural life as the theater itself. He restored its magnificent pipe organ to long-lost glory and twice saved the entire building — from demolition in the 1970s and from fire in the 1990s.
But in the end, Mr. Patten was forced to wage his greatest preservation campaign on his own behalf: In old age, in a development that may properly be called Oedipal, he battled eviction at the hands of the very theater he had nurtured.
Designed principally by French-born architect Ollivier J. Vinour, the Fox is a quarter-million-square-foot profusion of domes, turrets, minarets, Moorish archways, Oriental carpets, lush draperies, Egyptian bas-relief, trompe l'oeil paintings, fountains, elaborate lighting fixtures, stained glass, gold leaf, tile, and gracious banisters, which Mr. Patten, in the dead of night, would occasionally slide down for the sheer joy of it. Above its more than 4,000 seats, an ultramarine ceiling twinkles with crystal stars.
The Fox was named a national historic landmark in 1976, partly as a result of Mr. Patten's efforts. Today, it is used for movies; live events such as music and touring Broadway shows; and conventions.
The theater's centerpiece is its vast pipe organ, made by eminent Danish-born organ builder M.P. Moller. With four keyboards and 3,622 pipes — some more than 30 feet high — it is one of the largest theater organs in the world. "Mighty Mo," Atlantans fondly call it.
It was the organ that had first drawn Mr. Patten to the Fox, and for more than 35 years, he inhabited an antique-filled 3,640-square-foot duplex apartment beneath its dome, reached by climbing a cinematically appropriate 39 steps from a private entrance.
"They call me Phantom of the Fox because I know the building so well," he said in 2007. "I'm able to get from one point to another through all sorts of avenues."
Joe Griffin Patten was born on Feb. 9, 1927, in Lakeland, Fla. He became enraptured by the pipe organ at his church and watched keenly whenever the repairman came to work on it. At 12, he became the repairman's apprentice.
After Navy service stateside in World War II, he embarked on a career installing X-ray equipment. Visiting Atlanta in the mid-1940s, he was smitten by the Fox and, in particular, by Mighty Mo. He moved to the city in the early 1960s.
By then, the organ was unplayable, having fallen, like the theater itself, into deep disrepair. In 1963, working as a volunteer, he undertook its restoration. "He had to perform radical surgery," Robert Foreman, a longtime friend, said. "Everyone else had given up."
In saving the organ, Foreman said, Mr. Patten realized that he ought to save the theater — then slated for the wrecking ball — along with it. In 1974, he helped found Atlanta Landmarks, a nonprofit organization that oversaw the acquisition and multimillion-dollar restoration of the Fox.
That year, he formally joined the theater staff, spending 80 hours a week tending to its needs and to those of artists.
In 1979, in recompense for having saved the Fox, Atlanta Landmarks awarded Mr. Patten lifetime tenancy of its upper floors. He painstakingly renovated the space, then a derelict storage area, at his own expense — about $100,000, Foreman said.
Mr. Patten rescued the Fox again in 1996, after a predawn electrical fire broke out. His profound knowledge of the theater's anatomy, which let him direct firefighters to precisely the spot from which to attack the flames, was widely credited with having saved the place from burning to the ground.
But in 2010, as his health began to decline, Atlanta Landmarks tried to ease Mr. Patten out of the theater. Among the concerns the group expressed was that theater employees would be obliged increasingly to check on Mr. Patten.
The eviction attempt became an Atlanta cause célèbre, with members of the public picketing the Fox. Mr. Patten sued for the right to stay. Under the terms of a settlement in 2011, he was allowed to do so, and there he remained until 10 days before he died.