The Dakota, built from 1880 to 1884, is an apartment building located on the northwest corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West in New York City. It was designed by architect Henry J. Hardenbergh, who also designed the Plaza Hotel, for Edward Clark, head of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Its high gables and deep roofs with a profusion of dormers, terracotta spandrels and panels, niches, balconies and balustrades give it a North German Renaissance character, an echo of a Hanseatic townhall. It was a huge social success from the very start, but a long-term drain on the fortune of Clark (who died before it was completed) and his heirs. Some of the drawing rooms were 49 feet long, many of the ceilings are 14 feet high, the floors are inlaid with mahogany, oak, cherry. Meals could be sent up from the dining rooms in dumb-waiters.
The building is said to have been named because at the time it was built, the Upper West Side of Manhattan was sparsely inhabited and considered as remote as the Dakota territory. High above the 72nd Street entrance, a Dakota Indian keeps watch.
The building is best known as the home of former Beatle John Lennon in the late 1970s, and as the site of his murder on December 8, 1980. As of 2003, Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, still has an apartment in the building.
The Strawberry Fields Memorial was laid out in memory of Lennon in Central Park right across Central Park West.
Director Roman Polanski filmed much of Rosemary's Baby in The Dakota.
Celebrity residents have included:
- actress Lauren Bacall
- composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein
- newscaster Connie Chung
- actor José Ferrer
- singer Judy Garland
- actress Judy Holliday
- playwright William Inge
- actor Boris Karloff
- composer/singer John Lennon
- singer Sean Lennon
- artist Yoko Ono
- talk-show host Maury Povich
- comedienne Gilda Radner
- critic Rex Reed
