Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: The Dakota

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

The Dakota is one of New York City's great buildings. And its backstory is pretty great to boot. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sometimes the pop culture we love just teens hits differently in retrospect. Maybe it's a tabloid story we couldn't get enough of or an illicit student teacher relationship on our favorite show. We're Suzy Bannock-A-Rum and Jessica Bennett, posts of the new podcast in retrospect, where each week we'll revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us and probably you to try to understand what it taught us about the world and our place in it. You're the first person that I've talked to about this for years and years. Listen to In Retrospect on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Hey and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and we're going short stuff,

architectural styles, specifically architectural style from the mid-late 19th century, specifically in Manhattan and 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 sightings. One of which was L-fanning. Oh, yeah. Yeah, she's in the lobby of a hotel.

I go in 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, that's Dakota fanning. And I was like, she was sitting with people. It's like, there's got to be somebody else famous. Went to the bathroom, came out, sitting next that's Dakota 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. Then at one of my pavement shows, I saw Noah Bombak and Greta Gerwig. Are they an item? Are they married? Oh, okay.

Wow. Say so. Power couple. Yeah, I mean, he co-wrote Barbie with her. And Dean Warem of Luna, they're all good friends, and they're all together. So that was a three-banger and one. And this lady near me was jumping up and down,

like screaming 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 sweet. Oh, that's sweet. And then set next to Tiffany Haddish on the flight home. Wow. Like she was a girl across the Al from me. Did you bought did you bugger the whole time? No, I didn't say anything. Were you like, Hey, Tiffany, you remember this one joke you told those layers.

She's great though. She's very pretty too. Yeah. Yeah. She is wonderful. I like that voice. She got that sort of low voice Kind of like this I am Tiffany Haddish Okay, all right. We got to go because we're talking the Dakota here and not Dakota fanning or L fanning No, the apartment building in New York City. That's right. The one where John Linden was shot in front of Yeah, he's lived there at the time No, no, he lived there and he was he was shot on the sidewalk outside the decoder so um...

that's not the only reason decoder's famous although it's probably the biggest reason decoder's famous one of the reasons that decoder's 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 plunked 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-heeled? Well-heeled. Like, bits of stretches of real estate in the world was a dirt road still and nowhere is filled. No where. Yep. Nobody wanted to go up that far.

There were like, there's nothing up there. That's right. It's a haze-ed. In fact, it was so far out that the guy who built the Dakota who will meet in a 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 I don't just get rid of this 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 if you 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 nowhere's bills 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 brown stones, which were single-family homes. And there were a couple. Like a couple started to spring up in the 1870s. 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 Sew, 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 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 36 apartment building that was on Seventh between 55 and 56

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 It had elevators apparently, which I mean, we're talking like the 1880s, 1870s. And there was also, I think a, what was there? Oh, there was a ramp that went beneath it. So that you didn't have to solely your family reputation

by accepting deliveries out there in public. You could go down to the basement and meet the delivery driver to take whatever they gave you. Yeah, and it was just nicer overall. I think there was an intercom system and like Spanish tile, it was just a step up for sure. And all of a sudden in 1878, 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. Yeah. 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 for a message break and then return and begin talking about the Dakota some more. And Tiffany Haddish, right after this. To free the Joshua Chars, stuff you should go.

This is In Retrospect, a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us. I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer and bestselling author. I'm Susie Bette-Kerrem, an award-winning TV producer and filmmaker. Every week, we'll revisit a moment in cultural history that we just can't stop thinking about. From tabloid headlines to illicit student-teacher relationships, and one, very memorable red swimsuits. I found myself in Pamela Anderson's attic, as you do.

I put that red swimsuit in a safe because it seemed everybody wanted it. We're digging deep to better understand with these moments taught us about the world and our place in it. I want you to really smell the axe body spray that emanated during this time. It was presented more as kind of like a crime topic. Okay, and that's not a love story.

Not a love story. It had been branded on the uteruses of every single woman from C to shining C. Listen to In Retrospect on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Be unimaginable. Season two of The Unimaginable hones in on individuals who have led unimaginable lives by following their instinct, their gut, their passion.

I'm truly inspired by these episodes because they dig into the backstories of people that know success almost as a byproduct of their unwavering dedication to their craft. From guests like Tyco YTT, stick to your vision of what you're trying to do. It's just more pure. The family is more pure and the success is more pure. To Odessa Rae's life-changing experiences that strangely conditioned and equipped her to produce the Oscar award-winning documentary, Navalny. I was stuck in that Japanese prison for 42 days. This season delivers behind-the-scenes conversations about the many roads to success. Listen to the unimaginable, on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, we're talking about the Dakota now, starting now.

Okay. So if the Van Cor Lear was an advancement based on the stuff that came a few years before it, the Dakota was an even better advancement or improvement based on the Van Cor Lear. It had big apartments, big rooms, courtyard, 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, court yard, lots of light, ramp underneath and all that stuff. But it was also even more luxuriously designed.

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 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. The family part, I guess guess is what you call it. Just little details like that. Another big detail is that it had its own power plant that generated electricity for it in the 1870s.

Yeah, not bad. The kitchens had little balconies. See, 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 gem. It still is. It's one of my favorite buildings in New

York. Every time I go up there to Central Park at least, I try to pop out on that area and just 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, Francher and Assange or 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 call it Clark's folly, because people were deeply insensitive in the 19th 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 in apartments the people who lived in apartments as far as this house stuff works article points out were Widows widowers and people who are waiting for their wealthy relatives to die so they could inherit their house and all the sudden Clark is like

No, no, we're changing the game Anyone who is anyone is gonna want to live in an apartment and it turns out his gamble paid off. He was right Yeah, he sadly he died before it was finished. Did it say it. 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, 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. Right. Apparently the Adam sisters were heirs to a chewing gum fortune. They live there. there with it and that flavor tea berry one of the greatest gum flavors of all time that's it what what's 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 bet they have tea berry stick gum, and it's really worth trying.

All right, nice dip 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 1900s, that really started to take off

and really changed the face of New York. They started building up more after World War I, 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, straights and squares like bank presidents, but like stars, like Lauren McCall and Judy Garland.

Wow. We wow. Horse carloft too. That's pretty cool. Imagine living next to him. And then of course, two of the most famous residents, John Lennon and Yoko Ohno, who is widely blamed for moving John Lennon 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, it would seem to be his home and 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 it was a great scene for both he and Yoko. Yep. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Go check out the Dakota if you're in New York. It's a great looking building. Yes, it is.

And since Chuck said that, that means short stops out. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.