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It’s one of the oldest apartment buildings in the city and perhaps the most famous. The Dakota Apartments has a long list of famous residents, is architecturally very unique and extremely private, which is perhaps why it’s such an icon. We all want what we cannot have…and a board approval at The Dakota is hard to come by. (Madonna was even rejected by its co-op board when she attempted to buy an apartment there.)

The Dakota Apartments
*Photo by Wiki Commons*

As a real estate agent—and New York City history aficionado—I’ve always been fascinated by The Dakota. Did you know that it, along with the Museum of Natural History, were the original pioneers of the, then rugged and wild, Upper West Side?

The Upper East Side of Manhattan saw fairly immediate growth after the construction of Central Park in the 1860's, but The Upper West Side took a bit longer. In 1879, the Ninth Avenue El opened providing access to lower Manhattan and creating opportunities for real estate developers. Edward C. Clarke was one of them.

The west 70’s looking south along Central Park West. Notice the above ground telephone lines. After the Great Blizzard of 1888 all infrastructure would be laid underground since the snow toppled most of the towers.
Photo by NYPL Digital Archive

Clarke, who had made his fortune with the Singer Sewing Machine Company, hired architect Henry J. Hardenbergh for his large scale housing project Hardenbergh would later go on to design such famous NYC icons as The Plaza and Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Construction for the then unnamed apartment building commenced in 1880 and in 1884 The Dakota Apartments opened. The Dakota was said to have been named so because Edward C. Clarke had an affinity for the United States ‘new’ Western Territory and the Dakotas. New Yorker’s joked that it was named so because it was so far north and west one might as well be ‘in the Dakotas.’ To give you a sense of how removed The Dakota was up on 72nd Street, at the time new developments hadn’t made it any further north than 23rd Street!

Looking east along 72nd Street toward Central Park (1889)
*Photo by NYPL Digital Archive*

Clarke built the Dakota not for Captains of Industry like Andrew Carnegie or Cornelius Vanderbilt, but for the group just below them. It would be the first luxury apartment building and its design was very well thought out. Maybe to us in the modern world it might not seem so revolutionary, but Clarke designed each apartment so that the bedrooms were far removed from the main parlors and living rooms. He also made sure each of the apartments were unique, so no two are identical, a very progressive concept. Unfortunately, Clarke never saw his finished product as he passed away in 1883 before completion and bequeathed The Dakota to his grandson who was 12 years old at the time.

When it opened, apartments rented for between $1,500 and $5,000 yearly.

The Clark Family continued to own and operate The Dakota Apartments until 1961 when the Glickman Corporation purchased the building for a whopping $4.6 million. The tenants, fearing that Glickman would raze the building, decided to buy The Dakota themselves, successfully forming a co-operative.

Ice skating on The Lake in Central Park (1898)
*Photo by Shepp’s NY*

Some notable residents of The Dakota:

Lauren Bacall - Leonard Bernstein - Connie Chung - Rosemary Clooney - Roberta Flack - Judy Garland - Boris Karloff - John Lennon - Sean Lennon - John Madden - Joe Namath - Rudolf Nureyev - Rosie O'Donnell - Yoko Ono - Jack Palance - Maury Povich - Gilda Radner - Paul Simon

Unfortunately, The Dakota’s most notable claim to fame is John Lennon’s assassination at its entrance in 1980.

As an avid reader, I’ve always enjoyed Jack Finney’s historical fiction novel ‘Time and Again’ which uses The Dakota as its central focal point.

Today, The Dakota is still as mesmerizing as it was 140 years ago. My favorite architectural points are the projecting turrets, vaulted driveway leading into the central courtyard and of course its massive windows looking out onto Central Park.

Here are a few pictures of a unit currently on the market. It's a 6,000 sf five-bedroom, nine-bathroom unit located on the 8th floor overlooking Central Park priced at $20 million (50% financing).