The HBO serial publication " The Gilded Age " depicted the lavish homes of old - money families and rise industrial tycoons on New York City ’s Upper East Side in the 1880s , where a stretch of magnificent sign of the zodiac on Fifth Avenue became known asMillionaire ’s Row .
But at the same time , acrossCentral Parkon the Upper West Side of Manhattan , anotherarchitectural masterpiecearose that arguably had a much greater encroachment upon life in America ’s adult city .
The Dakota , an elegant multifamily building located at West 72nd Street and Central Park West , in all likelihood is most famous today as the property where ex - Beatle John Lennon once resided , before hismurderin 1980 . But there ’s much more to the Dakota . When it was completed back in 1884 , the Dakota was visualize as a place that would generalise the idea of European - mode apartment inhabit for affluent New Yorkers and was designed to provide them with everything that one of New York ’s single - folk brownstone house could offer up . In doing so , it became a major influence upon how people lived in the city . It also played a role in transforming the Upper West Side from a distant , undesirable location into one of the world ’s most valuable stretches of real land .
As local architectural historians explain , the Dakota also is a New York landmark with a story so far-out and compelling that evenJulian Fellowesmight be hard - pressed to make it up .
The Beginnings of New York City Apartment Culture
When the Dakota was build up , the idea of flat subsist in New York was still fairly new , and architects and developer were engaged render to figure out what would attract Americans to rent a live space in a big construction they deal with a lot of other people , instead of be in a house . In the 1870s , a few other apartment household sprung up in Manhattan , includingThe Albanyat Broadway and 51st Street . But the life blank inside run to be little and did n’t let in much outside light . Even so , those prototypes apparently intrigued a developer nominate Edward Cabot Clark .
" Clark waspresident of the Singer Sewing Machine Companyand very rich , so he had lots of money to invest , " explainsAndrew Alpern . He ’s an architect , attorney , historian and generator of the 2015 Christian Bible " The Dakota : A History of the World ’s well - know Apartment Building . " " He go out this and state , I can do better . "
Clark and his designer , Henry Janeway Hardenbergh , started out with the Van Corlear , a five - tale scarlet brick edifice with 36 apartments on Seventh Avenue between 55th and 56th streets that was pattern after The Albany , but with an improved pattern . " The rooms were much larger , the apartments were tumid , and it had a large courtyard , so there was much better light and air , " Alpern tell . In increase , it had elevators and a driveway with a Allium tricoccum that allowed horse - drawn wagons to descend into the cellar to make delivery to residents . The building also contained grand touches , including Spanish mosaic floor tile in the hall , vestibule and landings , and possibly an intercommunication system and campana system , as this 2006articlefrom The New York Times details . When the Van Corlear open in 1878 , its apartments — which weredescribedat the time as " a rigorously extraneous mode of bread and butter " — rented so quickly that Clark hump he was onto something .
A year after , Clark focused upon an expansive patch of land on the Upper West Side that belong toJacob Henry Schiff , the financier who had played a key function in industrialize the U.S. in the late 19th century . " His idea was that he would build a really nice theater there , but his married woman threatened divorce , " explainsMosette Broderick , a clinical professor of art history at New York University , and an potency in the area of 19th- and 20th - century computer architecture and urbanism . " So he sold the state to Clark . "
To facilitate finance the undertaking , Clark builta dustup of brownstone single - family line homeson West 73rd Street , and pumped the rent money into the raw building ’s construction budget . " He was a smart businessman , " Alpern explains .
The Dakota was bigger than the Van Corlear and built from light - colored brick and sandstone . Architecturally , it also was more adventurous as well . Though some sources identify it as a blend ofGerman Gothic , French Renaissance and English Victorian , Broderick says that Hardenbergh did n’t really observe any particular style . " It ’s a conception that is odd , " she says . " It bug out up and pops out , and has these big gable and does all sorts of things . And it is kind of unrestrained . "
to boot Clark had Hardenbergh make it even more grand , with bad apartment and room and fancy detailing , according to Alpern .
" The rooms were put down out very smartly , so that a visitor would not get a glance of the family line of the case-by-case apartments , " Broderick allege . " If someone came over and model in the front room , she could n’t see that your bed was unmade . "
" There are lots of little window arse which have a blind from the interior , " Broderick notes . " So if you ’re sitting there and the sunlight changes its course , you could more or less alter the blind and bear on reading . " Additionally , " the kitchen even had a niggling balcony . So that if you had in a summertime a wet swab or garbage , or whatever that might smell , you could put it up there so that it would n’t cast any olfactory property within the kitchen itself . "
But the design also retained some of the Van Corlear ’s innovations , admit the delivery Allium tricoccum to the cellar , beneath the out-of-door court where carriages would turn around after give birth passengers . Additionally , Clark built a boiler house behind the Dakota , and laid insulated organ pipe to bring steam and red-hot water into the building , an invention that protected against fire and explosions . The construction was even equip with its own small generating works to provide electrical energy , an conception that hadjust been demonstratedby Thomas Edison .
The Dakota also featured amenities such as private tennis and croquet courts , allot to Stephen Birmingham ’s rule book " Life at the Dakota : New York ’s Most Unusual Address . "
Clark , who die in 1882 , sadly never catch a chance to see his completed masterpiece . As a visionary , Alpern likens him to a recent nineteenth - century edition of Steve Jobs . When it came to apartment live , " he invented something newfangled , just as Jobs did with his iPhone , and made it so luxurious that he create a indigence that the great unwashed did n’t know they had . Jobs did it with his electronics , while Clark did it with his construction . "
From Business Owners to Entertainment’s Elite
Clark ’s plan was to market the Dakota to New Yorkers who were well - to - do executives and professionals , but not robber - mogul moneyed — the sort of common people who might otherwise have lived in a three - story brownstone . At a time when apartments were mostly occupy by widows or widowers , or hoi polloi waiting for relatives to croak off so they could inherit their house , the Dakota was a risky business proposition , Broderick notes . To make things even edgy , it was locate in what then was a mostly undeveloped part of Manhattan .
niggling wonder that some people derided the Dakota as " Clark ’s Folly , " according to Birmingham ’s book .
adverse to that prediction , the Dakota was fully rented before it even opened , with well - to - do line of work possessor and their families cluster to the stead . Unlike the player and role player who later occupied the Dakota , early tenants let in presidents of banks , excavation companies , railroads and sugar refinery , according to Birmingham ’s Holy Writ . Other residents include the Adams babe , who were heirs to a jaw gum company fortune .
The Dakota ’s presence also stimulated the growth of the Upper West Side and lead to other developer building lavishness flat theater — the Osborne , the Graham Court , the Ansonia and the Majestic , among others . In caricature of the Dakota ’s formula , they all offer up grown rooms with high ceilings , agree to Birmingham .
The Upper West Side choose off even more in the early 1900s , after New York City lift a law that had curb the top of multifamily buildings . After World War I , " they pull down the old words houses and progress multiple dwelling units , " Broderick notes .
The Dakota evolved as well . The building ’s population eventually shifted , with the bank chair give way to Hollywood sensation such as Lauren Bacall , Judy Garland , Boris Karloff and composer Leonard Bernstein , agree to Birmingham ’s account book . concert dance terpsichorean Rudolph Nureyev was another famous resident physician , according to a2015 Bloomberg.com article . Lennon and his married woman Yoko Ono moved there in 1973 , according toThe New York Times .
