Life at the Dakota
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Authors: Stephen; Birmingham
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PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF STEPHEN BIRMINGHAM
The Auerbach Will
A New York Times Bestseller
“Has the magic word âbestseller' written all over it ⦠Birmingham's narrative drive never falters and his characters are utterly convincing.” âJohn Barkham Reviews
“Delicious secretsâscandals, blackmail, affairs, adultery ⦠the gossipy Uptown/Downtown milieu Birmingham knows so well.” â
Kirkus Reviews
“An engrossing family saga.” â
USA Today
“Colorful, riveting, bubbling like champagne.” â
The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Poignant and engrossing ⦠Has all the ingredients for a bestseller.” â
Publishers Weekly
The Rest of Us
A New York Times Bestseller
“Breezy and entertaining, full of gossip and spice!” â
The Washington Post
“Rich anecdotal and dramatic material ⦠Prime social-vaudeville entertainment.” â
Kirkus Reviews
“Wonderful stories ⦠All are interesting and many are truly inspirational.” â
The Dallas Morning News
“Entertaining from first page to last ⦠Those who read it will be better for the experience.” â
Chattanooga Times Free Press
“Birmingham writes with a deft pen and insightful researcher's eye.” â
The Cincinnati Enquirer
“Mixing facts, gossip, and insight ⦠The narrative is engaging.” â
Library Journal
“Immensely readable ⦠Told with a narrative flair certain to win many readers.” â
Publishers Weekly
The Right People
A New York Times Bestseller
“Platinum mounted ⦠The mind boggles.” â
San Francisco Examiner
“To those who say society is dead, Stephen Birmingham offers evidence that it is alive and well.” â
Newsweek
“The games some people play ⦠manners among the moneyed WASPs of America ⦠The best book of its kind.” â
Look
“The beautiful people of
le beau monde
⦠Mrs. Adolf Spreckels with her twenty-five bathrooms ⦠Dorothy Spreckels Munn's chinchilla bedspread ⦠the âSt. Grottlesex Set' of the New England prep schools, sockless in blazers ⦠the clubs ⦠the social sports ⦠love and marriageâwhich seem to be the only aspect which might get grubbier. It's all entertaining.” â
Kirkus Reviews
“It glitters and sparkles.⦠You'll love
The Right People.
” â
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“A âfun' book about America's snobocracy ⦠Rich in curiosa ⦠More entertaining than
Our Crowd
⦠Stephen Birmingham has done a masterly job.” â
Saturday Review
“Take a look at some of his topics: the right prep schools, the coming out party, the social rankings of the various colleges, the Junior League, the ultra-exclusive clubs, the places to live, the places to play, why the rich marry the rich, how they raise their children.⦠This is an âinside' book.” â
The Washington Star
“All the creamy people ⦠The taboo delight of a hidden American aristocracy with all its camouflages stripped away.” âTom Wolfe,
Chicago Sun-Times
The Wrong Kind of Money
“Fast and wonderful. Something for everyone.” â
The Cincinnati Enquirer
“Dark doings in Manhattan castles, done with juicy excess. A titillating novel that reads like a dream. Stunning.” â
Kirkus Reviews
“Birmingham ⦠certainly keeps the pages turning. Fans will feel at home.” â
The Baltimore Sun
Life at the Dakota
New York's Most Unusual Address
Stephen Birmingham
Contents
THREE CO-OPERATIVE
“
WITH OTHERS IN A COMMON EFFORT
”
Introduction
THE RISING AND FALLING CASTLE
There is a castle in northern France that rises and falls against the horizon as one approaches it along the highway, driving westward from Ãpernay. The castle is the ancestral home of the Dukes of Montmort, and the rising and falling phenomenon is caused by the repeated gentle dips and elevations of the roadway. The castle appears on each incline, then disappears with each declivity, then reappears again. It sinks and surfaces many times before one finally reaches it, rather like a ship cresting and then vanishing across a rolling sea. Counting the appearances and disappearances of the Château Montmort is a favorite pastime of small children, as they return home to Paris with their parents after weekend picnics in the Champagne country.
But the curious thing about the rising and falling castle of Montmort is that each time it appears it not only seems larger, it also seems to change shape and form and outline, even color. New turrets appear, new wings, new towers. With each appearance the castle seems an entirely different building, with no relationship to the one the traveler has seen just moments before. In each appearance Château Montmort rearranges itself not subtly but dramatically, as though one had tapped the tube of a kaleidoscope and made the pieces of colored glass compose themselves into an entirely new pattern. The mystery of how the castle tricks and surprises the mind and eye is one of light and landscape and, perhaps, memory, though there is a tale in the region that each view of the castle is a mirage, a ghost, capable of emitting fluctuating, pulsating, changing images of itself, because when one arrives at Montmort at last, the castle is hardly visible.
The rising and falling castle might be a suitable metaphor for the Dakota apartments in New York. Not just because in the course of its nearly hundred-year history the Dakota has had its ups and downs, but because every aspect of the Dakota changes, depending upon the angle
from which it is viewed, and also depending upon who is viewing it. No two visions of the Dakota are quite the same, and, because it is a building that has housed and continues to house a number of people, the Dakota has collected more than its share of visions.
Memory is as tricky an instrument as vision, and the Dakota houses many memories, no two quite alike. The Dakota has collected many stories, some of them improbable, many of them contradictory. Many of the Dakota's tales have strikingly different versions, depending on who is recalling them, depending upon how events were perceived. One cannot, therefore, approach the Dakota in terms of “getting down the facts.” In a sense, the Dakota has no facts to offer, only impressions. So one must approach the Dakota rather as one would enter a fun-house Hall of Mirrors, full of wonder, watching the images and impressions change in shape and size and substance each time they appear.
At the same time, tracing the history of the Dakota and the people who have lived there is a little like examining the past of a small village in New Hampshire, a village which, on the surface, appears to have slept unchanged for a hundred years or more, and yet which, in human terms, has changed constantly. But this is a peculiar little village. For one thing, its neighbors abut each other vertically as well as horizontally. For another, it is a town whose residents have always been, for the most part, richâat times chic, at times trend-setting, at times foolish, at times eccentric, always interesting.
But, for the most part,
rich.
Part One
“CLARK'S FOLLY”
Oh, who of us would change a jot,
Or even an iota
â
We happy few whose happy lot
Is Life in the Dakota?â¦
Where else, Oh fortress of delight,
Inhabitants so famous
That every chronicle in sight
Must write of us or frame us?â¦
Blessed be the roof that shelters us!
With all our hearts we praise it,
And daily pray, unanimous,
That nobody will raze it!â¦
FROM
“Ballad of the Dakota”
BY
Marya Mannes
Chapter 1
“An Era of Upholstery”
Modern New Yorkers have grown accustomed to the experience of going around the corner to what was last week's favorite delicatessen only to discover that, this week, it has become a wig shop; or finding, where the little place that sold handbags used to be, just off Lexington, that the entire block has disappeared to make room for an office tower. Faced with yet another example of the fact that New York is a restless, ever-changing, never-finished city, New Yorkers simply shrug and go on about their business.