num_pages: 242
description: 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 Manhattans 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 nations western frontier. Despite its remote location the quirky German Renaissancestyle castle with its intricate faade peculiar interior design and gargoyle guardians peering down on Central Park was an immediate hit particularly among the citys well-heeled intellectuals and artists. Over the next century it would become home to an eclectic cast of celebrity residentsincluding Boris Karloff Lauren Bacall Leonard Bernstein singer Roberta Flack (the Dakotas first African-American resident) and John Lennon and Yoko Onowho 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.
language: English
title: Life at the Dakota: New York's Most Unusual Address
publisher: Open Road Media