Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and we're going short stuff. Architectural style, specifically architectural style from the mid to late nineteenth century, specifically in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, specifically about the Dakota.
That's right, Can I say something very quickly since this is short stuff? Sure, right before we recorded, you said Dakota Fanning, and that reminded me. I just got back from New York and I had six celebrity sidings, one of which was El Fanning.
Oh yeah, Yeah, she's.
In the lobby of a hotel. I go on that hotel to pee. I'm always got my head on a swivel in that town, especially in fancy hotel lobbies. Sure, and I was like, hey, this's the code of Fanning. And I was like, she was sitting with people. I was like, there's got to be somebody else famous, went to the bathroom, came out sitting next to Jessica Chastain.
Wow, pretty major siding.
Uh.
Then at one of my pavement shows, I saw uh uh Noah Bombbach and Greta Gerwig.
Yeah they're married.
Okay, wow, say so couple?
Yeah, I mean he co wrote Barbie with her and uh Dean Wareham of Luna. They're all good friends and they were all together, so that was a three banger in one.
And this uh.
This lady near me was jumping up and down like screaming it uh at Greta Gerwig and she was very sweet from up above in the balcony and like made the little heart symbol and like said she loved her.
It was very sweete uh.
And then sat next to Tiffany Hattish on the on the flight home. Wow, but she was a girl across the asl from me.
Did you did you bugger the whole time? No?
I didn't say anything.
Were you like, hey, Tiffany, you remember this one joke you told that was hilarious.
She's great though. She's very pretty too.
Yeah, yes, she is wonderful.
I like that voice.
So she got that sort of a low voice, kind of like this, I am Tiffany Hattish.
That's okay, all right, we gotta go because we're talking the Dakota here, not Dakota Fanning or l Fanning.
No, the apartment building in New York City.
That's right, the one where John Lennon was shot in front of Yeah, he's lived there at the time.
No, no, no, he lived there, and he was shot on the sidewalk outside the Dakota.
So that's not the only reason that Dakota is famous, although it's probably the biggest reason that Dakota is famous. One of the reasons that Dakota is famous is because it was one of the first apartment buildings in New
York City, like they didn't do apartments back then. And even more spectacular than that it being one of the first apartment buildings is that it was plunk down in the Upper West Side at a time when Central Park West, one of the most what is it, white heeled, high heeled, well healed, well healed, like bits of stretches of real estate in the world, was a dirt road still and nowheres.
Fill nowhere, yep. Nobody wanted to go up that far. They were like, there's nothing up there.
That's right to hay seeds.
And in fact, it was so far out that the guy who built the Dakota, who will meet in the second, Edward Cabot Clark, bought it from an industrialist whose wife threatened to divorce him if he built their house out there. And he's like, all right, I'll just get rid of his piece of land.
Then yeah, she's like, I want to live down here where it's posh in Alphabet City.
You know what's funny is you remember if you go read our book, there's a whole chapter on Keeping Up with the Joneses, and it talks a lot about this part of New York history where there are all sorts of nowheresvills around that today are just like incredibly famous and expensive.
That's right, all right.
So the Dakota, like you said, people were not living in apartments at the time. They were living in brownstones, which were single family homes, and there were a couple, like a couple started to spring up in the eighteen seventies. They weren't great. They were kind of like you think of New York apartments. They were small, they didn't have a lot of light. People didn't love renting and living in them. And along came this guy, Edward Cabot Clark
that you mentioned. He was the president of the Singer Sewing Machine company. So he was loaded and he got together with an architect named Henry Janeway Hardenberg a great name, and to get into real estate. And the first thing they built which is sadly not there anymore. Is kind of a prototype for the Dakota called the Van Corlier, a red brick, five story, thirty six apartment building that was on Seventh between fifty fifth and fifty six.
Yeah, and it immediately improved on its predecessors because the rooms were larger, the apartments themselves were larger. There was a courtyard, so there was plenty of like natural light and air, had elevators apparently which we talk in like the eighteen eighties, eighteen seventies, and there was also I think a what was there, Oh, there was a ramp that went beneath it. So then you didn't have to silly your family reputation by accepting deliveries out there in public.
You could go down to the basement and meet the delivery driver to keep them to take whatever they gave you.
Yeah, and it was just nicer overall. I think there was an intercom system and you know, like Spanish tile.
It was just a step up for sure.
And all of a sudden in eighteen seventy eight they rented out very quickly, and so Clark was like, all right, it turns out if you build it nice enough, they will come and apartments can be a real thing. And like you said, bought that property or I guess it was just land at the time, right, yeah, bought this land from Jacob Henry Schiff way way uptown and decided to build his second sort of dream property there.
Yep, which would be the Dakota. And I say that we pause from stage break and then return and begin talking about the Dakota some more.
And Tiffany Hattish right after this, stoffy jaws.
Sho, stff you a job, job, So Chuck, we're talking about the Dakota now starting now.
Okay.
So, if the vancourtlier was an advancement based on the stuff that came a few years before it, the Dakota was an even better advancement improvement based on the van courtlier. It had big apartments, big rooms, yard, lots of light, ramp underneath and all that stuff. But it was also like even more luxuriously designed. Like if you came over to someone's apartment, you couldn't see through down the hallway
to every single room. The walls were kind of like designed around so that you couldn't like there was a separation between your visitors and the living part of the apartment or the sleeping part, you know, the family part, I guess is what you'd call it. Just little details like that. Another big detail was that it had its own power plant that generated electricity for it in the eighteen seventies.
Yeah, not bad.
The kitchens had little balconies so if you had stinky stuff like garbage that you couldn't get down, or maybe even stinky food or something, you could put it just right outside the kitchen, which was something that a lot of places didn't have. They had a boiler, so they had insulated pipes bringing steam and hot water into the building, which was a big innovation at the time. And they had tennis courts, they had croquet courts. It was a real gym. It still is. It's one of my favorite
buildings in New York. Oh yeah, every time I go up there to Central Park, at least, I try to pop out on that area and just go go give it a look because it's a beautiful building. It's sort of a mishmash of styles. It's been called you know, French Renaissance or got German, Gothic, or even Victorian, and it's kind of a little bit of everything.
But it's beautiful.
I don't think I've ever seen it in person. If I have, I didn't realize it.
You may have. It's lovely. It's right there on a corner.
So here's the thing. When Edward Cabot Clark was creating the Dakota, he was widely derided for it. They called it Clark's folly because people were deeply insensitive in the nineteenth century. And the reason why they call it that is because again, it's in the middle of nowhere, and people aren't really into apartments like we said, they live in like three story brownstones, like they live in homes.
They don't live apartments. The people who lived in apartments, as far as this house Stuff Works article points out, were widows, widowers, and people who were waiting for their wealthy relatives to die so they could inherit their house. And all of a sudden, Clark is like, no, no, we're changing the game. Anyone who is anyone is going to want to live in an apartment. And it turns out his gamble paid off. He was right.
Yeah, he'd Sadly, he died before it was finished, so he didn't get to see it come to fruition. But It was certainly not his folly, because, like you said, people lined up to rent these things or I guess I don't know. Were they all rentals at the time. I wonder if anyone were available for sale.
I think they were all rentals.
Okay, well people rented them, but they were people that had money. They just weren't like robber barons who wanted to live in mansions. They were sort of the early New York, you know, upper class. They were people who like were bank presidents and people who like the CEOs of the time. Apparently the Adams sisters were heirs with chewing gum fortune.
They live there.
What's that and that flavored tea berry? One of the greatest gum flavors of all time? That's it?
Was it?
Tea berry?
Now? Are you kidding? Because I can't tell.
No, No, that's for real. It's like a kind of salmon pink colored gum. No. No, the wrapper is okay, it tastes like salmon too. No, it's a really delicate, unique flavor and you could probably find it like cracker barrel. Don't they have all sorts of old timey candies or one of those rocket fizz places.
I have no idea anywhere that sells candy.
I'll bet they have tea berry stick gum and it's really worth trying.
All right, O's a nice tip there, thanks.
So the Dakota started a trend all of a sudden, luxury apartment houses started popping up all over the place, kind of in the same model, with like bigger rooms and higher ceilings and stuff like that, and the Upper West Side. It wasn't right then, but around the early nineteen hundreds that really started to take off and really changed the face.
Of New York.
You know, they started building up more after World War One, obviously when New York said they could, and apartments became the way to go.
Yeah. Eventually the Dakota started seeing a different clientele, not you know, straits and squares like bank presidents, but like stars like Lauren McCall and Judy Garland.
Wowie wow.
Of course Karloff too. That's pretty cool. Imagine living next to him. And then of course two of the most famous residents, John Lynn and Yoko oh No, who was widely blamed for moving John Lenn to the Dakota, and he would have lived had she not done that. Do people say that probably somebody out there, okay, poking fun at those people.
I think he loved the Dakota.
Yeah, that would seem to be as home as they were there for like a dozen years, I think right before he died.
I'm not sure how long he loved New York City though. It was a great scene for both he and Yoko.
Yep.
Yeah, anything else, I got nothing else. Go check out the Dakota if you're in New York. It's a great, great looking building.
Yes it is. And since Chuck said that that means short stuff out.
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