The Dakota
The Dakota, also known as the Dakota Apartments, is a cooperative apartment building at 1 West 72nd Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The Dakota was constructed between 1880 and 1884 in the German Renaissance style and was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh for businessman Edward Cabot Clark. The building was one of the first large developments on the Upper West Side and is the oldest remaining luxury apartment building in New York City. The building is a National Historic Landmark and has been designated a city landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. The building is also a contributing property to the Central Park West Historic District.
The Dakota occupies the western side of Central Park West between 72nd and 73rd streets. It is largely square in plan and built around a central H-shaped courtyard, through which all apartments are accessed. Formerly, there was a garden to the west of the Dakota, underneath which was a mechanical plant serving the Dakota and some adjacent row houses. The facade is largely composed of brick with sandstone trim and terracotta detailing. The main entrance is a double-height archway on 72nd Street, which leads to the courtyard. The building's design includes deep roofs with dormers, terracotta spandrels and panels, niches, balconies, and balustrades. Each apartment at the Dakota had a unique layout with four to twenty rooms. The building is divided into quadrants, each of which has a stair and an elevator for tenants, as well as another stair and another elevator for servants.
After Clark announced plans for an apartment complex at the site in 1879, work began in late October 1880. The building was not given its name until mid-1882, and Clark died before the Dakota was completed in October 1884. The Dakota was fully rented upon its completion. The building was managed by the Clark family for eight decades and remained largely unchanged during that time. In 1961, the Dakota's residents bought the building from the Clark family and converted it into a housing cooperative. The Dakota has historically been home to many artists, actors, and musicians, including John Lennon, who was murdered outside the building on December 8, 1980. The building remained a cooperative into the 21st century.
Site
The Dakota is at 1 West 72nd Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. The building occupies the western sidewalk of Central Park West between 72nd Street to the south and 73rd Street to the north. The Dakota occupies a nearly square land lot with an area of. The land lot has frontages of along Central Park West and along 72nd and 73rd streets. Nearby locations include the Majestic apartment building immediately to the south, the Olcott Hotel to the west, the Langham apartment building to the north, and Central Park to the east.The Dakota's developer Edward Cabot Clark, who headed sewing machine firm Singer Manufacturing Company, selected the building's site based on several characteristics. The building is on the crest of the West Side plateau, which overlooks much of Manhattan. Additionally, 72nd Street is wide, making it one of several major crosstown streets in the Manhattan street grid. Clark also developed 27 row houses on 72nd and 73rd streets, adjacent to the Dakota, which are no longer extant. The two developments were part of Clark's larger plan for a cohesive neighborhood; the row houses were in the middle of the block, where land values were lower, whereas the Dakota was built on the more valuable site next to Central Park. Clark developed another set of row houses at 13–65 and 103–151 West 73rd Street, some of which still exist. All of these houses were designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh.
The Dakota is one of several apartment buildings on Central Park West that are primarily identified by an official name. Even though a street address was sufficient to identify these apartment buildings, this trend followed a British practice of giving names to buildings without addresses. By contrast, buildings on Fifth Avenue, along the eastern side of Central Park, are mainly known by their addresses. Unlike other large apartment buildings on Central Park West, the Dakota was not named after a previous building on the site. Christopher Gray of The New York Times described the Dakota as one of several apartment buildings that were famous enough "to maintain their names simply in common custom".
Architecture
The Dakota was designed by Hardenbergh for Clark and built between 1880 and 1884. The construction process involved several contractors including stonemason John L. Banta, plumber T. Brieu, iron supplier Post & McCord, carpenter J. L. Hamilton, stonework supplier J. Gillis Se Son and Henry Wilson, and woodwork contractor Pottier & Stymus.There is disagreement over the building's architectural style. CNBC and writers Sarah Bradford Landau and Carl W. Condit described the building as being built in a German Renaissance Revival style, but a contemporary source described the building's design as being patterned after "the period of Francis I". The writer Elizabeth Hawes said in 1993 that the building had been characterized as "Brewery Brick Victorian neo-Gothic Eclectic". The building's design includes deep roofs with dormers, terracotta spandrels and panels, niches, balconies, and balustrades. The designs of the dormers, roofs, and windows were influenced by the Northern Renaissance style.
The Dakota is a nine-story building; most of the building is seven stories high, although there are also two-story gables and garrets rising up to four stories. Some contemporary sources described the building as being ten stories high, including the raised basement, while others classify the Dakota as being eight stories high. The Dakota measures tall and was the tallest building in the neighborhood when it was constructed. Due to the apartments' high ceilings, the Dakota's height was equivalent to that of a standard 15-story building.
Courtyards
Main courtyard
The building is largely square in plan and built around a central H-shaped courtyard. The space measures long and up to wide. The courtyard provides entry to all apartments and doubles as a light court for the interiors of each apartment. A writer for the American Architect and Building News described the Dakota's courtyard and similar spaces in other buildings as "a safe, pleasant and sheltered place, under the eye of the Janitor, where tenants can enter, but thieves cannot...". The writer also suggested that children could play within the courtyard, but other, unidentified observers believed such a usage attracted unsolicited attention. The apartments are accessed by four passageways, one from each corner of the courtyard. The main courtyard also functioned as a meeting area for residents, since the rest of the building was designed with "the utmost in personal privacy" as a consideration. Over the years, the courtyard has hosted events such as parties and Christmas carols.A glass breezeway ran along the western portion of the courtyard. This breezeway had been installed during the 1920s to protect residents from inclement weather. When the courtyard was rebuilt in 2004, the sidewalk under the breezeway was reconstructed with bluestone pavers that measure up to long and thick. The Dakota's courtyard originally contained two fountains, which doubled as skylights for the basement. Horse-drawn carriages, entering from 72nd Street, used the courtyard to turn around. After automobiles supplanted horse-drawn carriages, the Dakota banned automobiles from the courtyard because the space could not support the weight of modern vehicles. The deck of the courtyard was entirely replaced in 2004 because the steel beams that supported it had corroded severely. The modern courtyard is a reinforced-concrete slab, which is covered by granite pavers.
A service driveway also runs along the western side of the main courtyard. The driveway descends to the basement, where there is a lower courtyard with the same dimensions as the ground-level courtyard. This driveway was originally used to deliver goods and "commodities of housekeeping", as well as remove garbage and ashes. All servants entered and exited the Dakota through this driveway. The Dakota's distinct upper and lower courtyards differed from that of Hardenbergh and Clark's earlier Van Corlear apartment house at Seventh Avenue and 55th Street, where residents and servants used the same courtyard.
Other spaces
To the west of the Dakota was another garden; both the Dakota and the adjacent row houses were served by a mechanical plant below the garden. The placement of the mechanical plant outside the building was a deliberate measure to reassure residents in case the machinery exploded. There were also tennis and croquet courts within the garden. Images show that the garden was surrounded by a fence, and the area above the mechanical plant was further enclosed by a hedge. The garden had become a parking lot by the 1950s, and the Mayfair apartment building was developed on the garden's site in 1964.The building is surrounded by a recessed areaway, also described as a dry moat. The areaway was intended to increase residents' safety, as well as allow natural light and air to enter the basement. An entrance to the New York City Subway's 72nd Street station, served by the, is built within this areaway. A cast-iron fence separates the areaway from the sidewalk. The sidewalk was originally made of bluestone slabs.