The Dakota Totally Explained

Everything about The Dakota totally explained

The Dakota, constructed from October 25, 1880 to October 27, 1884, is an apartment building located on the northwest corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West in New York City (see map

).
   The architectural firm of Henry Janeway Hardenbergh was commissioned to do the design for Edward Clark, head of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. The firm also designed the Plaza Hotel.
   The building's high gables and deep roofs with a profusion of dormers, terracotta spandrels and panels, niches, balconies and balustrades give it a North German Renaissance character, an echo of a Hanseatic townhall. Nevertheless, its layout and floor plan betray a strong influence of French architectural trends in housing design that had become known in New York in the 1870s.
   According to popular legend, the Dakota was so named because at the time it was built, the Upper West Side of Manhattan was sparsely inhabited and considered as remote as the Dakota Territory. However, the earliest recorded appearance of this account is in a 1933 newspaper story. It is more likely that the building was named "The Dakota" because of Clark's fondness for the names of the new western states and territories. High above the 72nd Street entrance, the figure of a Dakota Indian keeps watch. The Dakota was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976.

Features

The Dakota is built in a square-shape around a central courtyard, accessible through the arched passage of the main entrance, a porte cochère large enough that horse-drawn carriages could pass through, letting their passengers disembark sheltered from the weather. In the Dakota multi-story stable building at 77th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, elevators lifted carriages to upper floors. The "Dakota Stables" building was still in operation as a garage until February 2007, but it's now slated to be developed by the Related Companies into a multimillion dollar condominium project.
   The general layout of the apartments is also in the French style of the period, with all major rooms not only connected to each other en filade in the traditional way, but also accessible from a hall or corridor, an arrangement that allowed a natural migration for guests from one room to another, especially on festive occasions, yet gave service staff discreet separate circulation patterns that offered service access to the main rooms. The principal rooms, such as parlors or the master bedroom, face the street, while the dining room, kitchen, and other auxiliary rooms are oriented towards the courtyard. Apartments are thus aired from two sides, which was a relative novelty in New York at the time. (In the Stuyvesant building, which was built in 1869, a mere ten years earlier, and which is considered New York's first apartment building in the French style, many apartments have windows to one side only.) Some of the drawing rooms were 49 ft. (about 15 m) long, and many of the ceilings are high; the floors are inlaid with mahogany, oak, and cherry (although in the apartment of Clark, the building's founder, some floors were famously inlaid with sterling silver).
   Originally, the Dakota had 65 apartments with four to twenty rooms, no two alike. These apartments are accessed by staircases and elevators placed in the four corners of the courtyard. Separate service stairs and elevators serving the kitchens are located in mid-block. Built to cater for the well-to-do, the Dakota featured many amenities and a modern infrastructure that was exceptional for the time. The building has a large dining hall; meals could also be sent up to the apartments by dumbwaiters. Electricity was generated by an in-house power plant, and the building has central heating. Besides servants' quarters, there was a playroom and a gymnasium under the roof. (In later years, these spaces on the tenth floor were—for economic reasons—converted into apartments, too.) The lot of the Dakota also comprised a garden and private croquet lawns and a tennis court behind the building between 72nd and 73rd Streets.
   The Dakota was a huge social success from the very start (all apartments were rented before the building opened), but a long-term drain on the fortune of Clark (who died before it was completed) and his heirs. For the high society of New York, it became fashionable to live in such a building, or to rent at least an apartment as a secondary city residence, and the Dakota's success prompted the construction of many other luxury apartment buildings in New York City.

Death of John Lennon and memorial

The building is best known as the home of former Beatle John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, starting in 1973, and as the location of Lennon's assassination in 1980. As of 2008, Ono still has an apartment in the building. The Strawberry Fields memorial was laid out in memory of Lennon in Central Park directly across Central Park West. Every year, Ono marks the anniversary of Lennon's death with a now-public pilgrimage to the memorial. However, the Dakota has throughout its history housed a veritable who's who of the great and famous particularly in the arts and business, including Andrew Carnegie.

In popular culture

Director Roman Polanski filmed the exteriors for Rosemary's Baby at the Dakota; however, the interiors were created on a Hollywood soundstage. The building doesn't allow filming inside.
The building also plays a crucial role in Jack Finney's novel Time and Again.
The building features prominently in Lee Child's 2006 Jack Reacher novel The Hard Way.
Special Agent Aloysius X. L. Pendergast, a fictional character appearing in many novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, has an apartment at the Dakota.
David Aames, the protagonist in Cameron Crowe's 2001 movie Vanilla Sky is a Dakota resident, although only exteriors of the building were shot on location; all the interiors were shot on a sound stage.
Tim Curry mentions the Dakota by name in his song "I Do the Rock".
Nas mentions the Dakota by name in his song "Thief's Theme" while talking about John Lennon
The Dakota is referenced in the Hole song, "20 Years In The Dakota".
Gene Simmons of Kiss sought residency in the Dakota in the late 1970s, but his request was turned down by the building's co-op board.
John Lennon was shot in front of the Dakota on December 8 1980 by Mark David Chapman.
Billy Joel sought residency in the Dakota, but his request for residency was turned down by the co-op board on September 25, 1977.
Christine Lavin wrote and performs a song called "The Dakota". In it she recounts her feelings about John Lennon's murder and how she's compelled to think of the incident every time she passes the building.
Brand New mentions the Dakota in their song "Play Crack the Sky" from the album Deja Entendu.
Fictional character Windsor Horne Lockwood III, from a series of novels by Harlan Coben, lives in the Dakota.
In the popular book series, The Baby-Sitters Club, Stacey McGill's ex-best friend Laine Cummings and her family live in the Dakota.
The band O.A.R. wrote a song titled "Dakota" about the murder of John Lennon at The Dakota, it was released in 2005.
In Jason Robert Brown's musical The Last Five Years, Jamie and Cathy reference The Dakota in the song "The Next Ten Minutes".
On the television show Frasier, Frasier's brother Niles lives in an impossibly expansive apartment in a legendary building called "The Montana."

Education

The Dakota is zoned to P.S. 87 William Sherman

within the New York City Department of Education. The Dakota is unzoned for middle school; residents may contact Region 10 to determine the middle school assignments.

Famous residents

Well-known residents of the Dakota building have included:

actress Lauren Bacall

composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein

newscaster Connie Chung

sportsman F Ambrose Clark who was also grandson of the original builder

actor José Ferrer

singer Roberta Flack

author Charles Henri Ford

actress Judy Garland

actor Steve Guttenberg

actress Judy Holliday

playwright William Inge

actor Boris Karloff

composer/singer John Lennon

singer Sean Lennon, son of John and Yoko

football player, coach, and announcer John Madden

interior decorator Syrie Maugham

author Carson McCullers

dancer Rudolf Nureyev

artist Yoko Ono

talk-show host Maury Povich

comedienne Gilda Radner

critic Rex Reed

film and television producer Edgar J. Scherick

singer Neil Sedaka

actor Jason Robards

actor Zachary Scott

producer Jane RosenthalFurther Information

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