GALLERY
Architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh created for Edward Black a building remarkably designed in the French Style of the period, whose “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 town hall. 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.”
Out of all of the apartments, there are just seven of them that are available, being the cheapest on $1.695 million (with one bedroom and one bathroom) and the most expensive on $39 million (with five bedrooms and six bathrooms). Apartment #46, with a prize of $14.5 million, has been on the market for eight consecutive years, which is not surprising considering the restrictive policy the building has for new owners.
The mass edification would come later, being The Dakota the first proper building of the district. In fact, the location, according to a legend, is what gave The Dakota its name. Since it was far-west in the city, people liked to joke that it might as well have been built in the Dakotas.
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As a consequence of the absence of other similar buildings in the Upper West, the nine-stories height building was seen by the New Yorkers as an intrusion in the skyline of the Upper West Side, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a success, since all 65 original apartments of the building - each with a reported four bathrooms, parlour, and servant quarters, yet all of them different from each other- where all occupied even before the building ended up its construction and remained this way until 1929.
Arguably the most famous apartment building in the world, The Dakota has been famous not only because John Lennon lived with Yoko Ono in one of the apartments (she still does) and was murdered in the south door of the building, but also because it is one of the pioneers in the edification of the Upper West Side and therefore one of most exclusive buildings in Manhattan.
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When it was built in 1884, the emplacement of The Dakota was seen as pretty enviable, since that part of Manhattan was then what we could call the countryside. Elizabeth Hawes wrote in her book, "New York, New York, How the Apartment House Transformed the Life of the City (1869-1930) “The Upper West Side was still a patchwork of small sleepy settlements and vacant lots, interrupted here and there by a country house, an inn, an asylum or a saloon”.
THE DAKOTA
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The Dakota is since the 60’s, much like in The San Remo, a cooperative, which means that after you submit years of financial statements and tax documents, go through a background check, and pay a fee of over $1,000 – all of these necessary to apply for an apartment- you can be rejected by the building’s co-op board, something that has happened to Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, Cher, Billy Joel, Madonna, Carly Simon, Alex Rodriguez, Judd Apatow or Tea Leoni.
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The Dakota is located a few blocks away from The San Remo and next to Central Park, so you can go walking and visit the outside of both of them and then continue down in the park to the Met, or the Natural History Museum. However, the Dakota is currently under restoration, so its façade its completely covered. Make sure that if you are going to visit the building, the restoration has finished.
TEXT-SOURCES:
City Realty - The Dakota, Building Review
Bussiness Insider - 15 Facts About The Dakota
City Realty - The Dakota
Wikipedia - The Dakota
Business Insider - "No One Wants To Live (...)"
Bloomberg - A New Look Inside The Dakota
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IMAGES-SOURCES (Article):
Image 1: Wikipedia Commons (The Dakota)
Image 2: The Times UK
Image 3: Bussiness Insider (Wikimedia Commons)
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IMAGES-SOURCES (Gallery):
Image 1: © Stefen Turner
Image 2: House Crazy (za-men.eu)
Image 3: Wikimedia Commons
Image 4, 5: Architectural Digest
Image 6: © Allison Harger BY/ND
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