The Dakota - New York's Most Unusual Address September 23 2014

In 1884, the New York Daily Graphic called it "one of the most perfect apartment house in the world. Besides offering the most lavish apartments that New Yorkers had ever encountered, the Dakota also provided some of the best views in town. 

 

 

Dakota means "friend" in the Dakota language. This is the name of a Native American people of the northern Mississippi valley. When completed in 1884 this grand apartment building was located in an unfashionable and desolate district, which prompted New Yorkers to quip that it was as distant as the Dakota Territory. The name remained even as the building’s fame and success spurred the area’s subsequent transformation into the populous Upper West Side.

 

 

Today, some 130 years later, The Dakota still has fabulous apartments and drop-dead views. It also boasts one of the most remarkable tenant roasters of any of any building in the Unites States. Among the Dakota's most famous former and current residents are Lauren Bacall, Judy Holliday, Rex Reed, Fannie Hurst, John Madden, Rosemary Clooney, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Boris Karloff etc..