Life at The Dakota - New York's most unusual address

Stephen Birmingham

Open Road Media

2015

234 páginas

7h 48m

ISBN-10: B017APD53Q

A history of the Manhattan building and its famous tenants, from Lauren Bacall to John Lennon, by the New York Times–bestselling author of “Our Crowd”.

When Singer sewing machine tycoon Edward Clark built a luxury apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in the late 1800s, it was derisively dubbed “the Dakota” for being as far from the center of the downtown action as its namesake territory on the nation’s western frontier. Despite its remote location, the quirky German Renaissance–style castle, with its intricate façade, peculiar interior design, and gargoyle guardians peering down on Central Park, was an immediate hit, particularly among the city’s well-heeled intellectuals and artists. Over the next century it would become home to an eclectic cast of celebrity residents—including Boris Karloff, Lauren Bacall, Leonard Bernstein, singer Roberta Flack (the Dakota’s first African-American resident), and John Lennon and Yoko Ono—who were charmed by its labyrinthine interior and secret passageways, its mysterious past, and its ghosts. Stephen Birmingham, author of the New York society classic “Our Crowd”, has written an engrossing history of the first hundred years of one of the most storied residential addresses in Manhattan and the legendary lives lived within its walls.

Life at the Dakota is a deliciously entertaining social history that describes the lives of the rich and trendy who have lived at the Dakota - a New York apartment house daringly erected in 1884, "too far up" and on the wrong side of town. This story has the fabulous characters, sharp insights, and captivating anecdotes of Stephen Birmingham's earlier works, and the atmosphere of the elegant Dakota is so powerful that the building itself becomes an unforgettable major character. The Gustav Schirmers were among the early tenants. Others such as Boris Karloff, Judy Holliday, Leonard Bernstein, and and Lauren Bacall would follow. In this edition the author has included an afterword on John Lennon's murder at the Dakota.