The Dakota: An Architectural Treasure and Exclusive Residence
If you have ever walked through the middle of Central Park from the Upper East Side of Manhattan to the Upper West, you most likely came upon an enormous building facing the entrance of the park at 72nd Street and Central Park West. You probably noticed that, just before you exit the park, there is a memorial to John Lennon of Beatles fame, who was shot and killed there on December 8, 1980. He and his wife Yoko Ono were just two of the many A-list residents at The Dakota.
Work began on this mammoth luxury residence in 1880 and was completed in 1884, designed in the German Renaissance style by architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh. It is a National Historic Landmark and now the oldest surviving luxury apartment building in New York City.
Like many New Yorkers, I passed by this formidable building regularly, without knowing much or any of its long history with its famous inhabitants, save John Lennon. I have a vague memory of a friend telling me that Madonna had failed to secure an apartment there, having been rejected by the building’s board members. The Dakota was completely rented out from the moment of its opening in 1884. In the 1960s, before the building went co-op, rents were in the $1,000 to $6,000 range. In today’s pricing that would be upwards of $24,000 per month. The apartments were allocated for the super-famous and/or super-rich.
There are certainly many other luxury apartment buildings throughout Manhattan that may be grander, more expensive, or even more exclusive, but The Dakota is in a class by itself. The structural details of the façade, the roof, and even the windows are all singularly unique; it is simply impossible to build something like this any longer. The list of residents over the years includes top people in almost every field of work.
Actress Lauren Bacall (The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, Dark Passage) bought a three-bedroom apartment there in 1961 for likely $48,000 or less and lived there for the next 53 years. It recently sold for around $26 million.
Leonard Berstein, American composer and conductor, moved into the Dakota in 1975 with his family. Judy Garland lived there with her family briefly in 1961.
More recently, newscaster Connie Chung and journalist, newscaster and talk-show host Maury Povich bought an apartment. Roberta Flack, a famous R & B singer (Killing me Softly with His Song from 1973) also lived there—her two-bedroom apartment sold in 2018 for $5.8 million.
It doesn’t take a lot of digging on the internet to find photos of the interiors of the lavish apartments. When the homes of some of these celebrities go on the market, it always creates quite a stir, and those of us not usually granted access can finally get a glimpse of how they lived. The Dakota has become synonymous with exclusivity, and the building itself is every bit as famous as its residents, past and present.