Life at the Dakota (20 page)

An alternative to window units was through-the-wall air conditioning. These systems were less obtrusive since they fitted flush against the exterior walls of the building but they required the removal of masonry, some of it richly ornamental. Freddie Victoria applied again for a through-the-wall unit, pointing out that his apartment faced the back of the building where such an installation would be well away from public view. Once more his request was denied. Throughout the early 1960's arguments about air conditioners continued, and tempers soared with the thermometer in a battle between modernists and preservationists. Meanwhile, several tenants went ahead and installed through-the-wall units anyway, and some window units sprouted, particularly from windows at the rear of the building.

In 1969 the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission officially declared the Dakota a city landmark. In its designation the
Landmarks Commission said, “The Dakota … is one of the earliest and most distinguished apartment houses in the United States … Overlooking the northern end of Central Park, the Dakota simultaneously affords its residents a magnificent view of the Park and presents an impressive appearance to passers-by. Its richly varied skyline makes this building a prime example of late nineteenth-century picturesque eclecticism … With its massive load-bearing walls, heavy interior partitions and double-thick floors of concrete, it is one of the quietest buildings in the city.…”

The Dakotans were initially delighted; they had, in fact, actively sought the landmark designation. Believing, rightly or wrongly, that they had helped the building narrowly escape the wreckers' ball, the Dakotans believed that now that they were a landmark, the building would be preserved until the end of time. Besides, living in a landmark seemed to carry such cachet. A small bronze plaque was affixed to one of the Dakota's Seventy-second Street cornerstones attesting to its special, hallowed status.

But the Dakotans soon discovered that being a landmark was a mixed blessing, to say the least. Yes, the designation conveyed no small amount of intangible prestige to the address. But the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission offered no guarantee whatever that the building would be perpetually “preserved.” The Landmarks Commission had no budget from which to offer funds for the preservation of old buildings, nor did being a landmark entitle an old building to any sort of special tax relief. What it meant was that no exterior changes to the Dakota could be made without the commission's approval. Ward Bennett could never have created his dramatic pyramid-shaped apartment with its two-story-high slanting skylight had he not done so before the building was declared a landmark. Furthermore, the Landmarks Commission could do little to prevent the Dakota's eventual sale to a developer who might want to tear down the building and replace it with a modern, more efficient structure. If such a situation were to arise, the Commission would have just one year in which to find a buyer who was willing to preserve the building. Failing that, the Commission would have no choice but to allow the building's sale to the developer.

Other old apartment houses—including 810, 834 and 960 Fifth Avenue, and the San Remo and the Beresford on Central Park West
—had been offered landmark status by the Commission and had resisted the temptation to accept it. So had the Osborne, at 205 West Fifty-seventh Street. In many ways, theirs was the more sophisticated decision. For the Dakota, it soon turned out, being a landmark was more of a burden than a boon. (In recent years some New Yorkers have begun to think of the Landmarks Commission's activities as a series of dreadful jokes; in 1979, for example, there was outrage among certain of the city's citizenry when the Commission designated as a landmark the subway kiosk at the corner of Seventy-second Street and Broadway.)

The Dakota now had to deal with the Commission on every detail concerning its exterior, and the Commission was just another division of New York City's bureaucracy with a foundation mentality. Among others, the question of air conditioners persisted. Once more, Freddie Victoria, a gentleman of persistence and also a man who believed in going by the rules, petitioned the Landmarks Commission for permission to install a through-the-wall unit, pointing out that there were already seven such units in the building. Once more, permission was denied. He next tried pleading his case in the press; he told the New York
Times
that he could not afford central air conditioning and that he felt that window units, which many Dakotans now had, obstructed light and views and sometimes required original windowpanes to be destroyed. “What is the point of having landmark preservation if one cannot have creature comforts,” he wanted to know, “and if there are no benefits from the stigma of its hardships?”

Beverly Moss Spatt, the Commission's chairman, replied that “in general” her agency would “not permit through-the-wall units where any architectural element will be destroyed.” Mrs. Spatt added that she would not have permitted the existing units if she had been chairman when they were installed. Taking Freddie Victoria's side, Lauren Bacall was more outspoken. The Landmarks Commission's attitude, she said, was “absolutely asinine. There is nothing as ugly as a window air conditioner. Unless we are going back to the Middle Ages, we should make living in the city as practicable and as palatable as possible in this age of electronics.”

Freddie Victoria then tried another tactic and asked the Commission to let him install Thermo-Pane glass in his windows. Thermo-Pane, he felt, would help insulate his apartment from the summer heat
as well as the winter cold, thereby cutting his fuel consumption and conserving energy. He pointed to the fact that his bedroom windowsills were already rotting from rainwater that was seeping in around ill-fitting windowpanes. The bureaucratic response from the Commission to this request was bizarre: “If the original architect had wanted Thermo-Pane glass in the windows, he would have installed them with Thermo-Pane.”

Now Betty Bacall decided to throw herself full force into the battle to cool her apartment. Since no one in the building now had more experience in dealing with the Landmarks Commission than Freddie Victoria, she went to him for advice. Freddie agreed to take her case to the Commission. When Freddie appeared at the Commission's offices at 305 Broadway, he explained that he had come on behalf of another Dakota tenant who wished to install through-the-wall air conditioning in her apartment. The commissioner looked bored and unreceptive to the idea. “The tenant is Miss Lauren Bacall,” Freddie said, and suddenly the commissioner looked more interested. After riffling through some files of landmarks regulations, the commissioner said hesitantly, “Will I get to meet Miss Bacall?” Freddie assured him that Miss Bacall would be happy to discuss the matter with the commissioner, and suggested that the commissioner “drop by for drinks with her on Thursday.”

Before meeting with the commissioner, Freddie Victoria advised Miss Bacall to dress for the occasion in her sultry, sexy, movie-star best, and when the commissioner arrived on Thursday he was not greeted by the earthy, salty, sardonic and self-mocking woman—New York housewife and mother of three who usually tossed an old sweater over her blouse and slacks when she went out to walk her dog in the park—that the Dakotans knew as a neighbor. He was greeted instead by a radiant Lauren Bacall, the Hollywood Legend. She received permission to install her through-the-wall unit. To be sure, there were a few strings attached. She had to agree to save and store and catalogue and label all the bricks and stone removed to make way for her air conditioner, and to promise that if she ever vacated the apartment she would either restore the façade to its original condition or else secure an agreement from the new purchaser that he or she would do so.

But she got her air conditioner—much, needless to say, to the disgruntlement of other tenants in the building who did not happen
to be Lauren Bacall, and who continue to complain about how Miss Bacall got her air conditioner. Freddie Victoria, for instance, is still without air conditioning and still has rotting, leaking windowsills.

The Landmarks Commission quickly became the Dakota's albatross, and the ironies of the situation were not lost on the Dakotans. Earlier, various city agencies had insisted on condemning the splendid old elevator cabs as “outmoded,” and had forced the building to install modern ones. Now here was another city agency that was refusing to let them modernize anything at all. In 1973 the Dakota's board decided that the building's intricate roof was badly in need of repair. Slates had loosened and fallen off. The copper trim had come loose and, in some places, had corroded. There were leaks. Cast-iron chimney caps had broken off and finials and statuary needed attention. A roof is obviously an exterior detail, and so the Landmarks Commission's approval was needed before any work could be undertaken.

The Commission was nothing if not solicitous in the matter. It pored over the Dakota's original plans and brought in experts and technicians from a variety of fields—architectural, structural and historical. It spent months inspecting the roof, and when all the outside studies had been gathered and collated and cross-indexed, the Commission came up with its recommendation: a full restoration was what was needed. It would cost about a million dollars, which would amount to an average assessment of roughly $10,000 for each of the building's tenant families. Collectively the Dakotans groaned. Ultimately, and only after a great deal of heel-dragging, the Commission agreed to a more modest patch job—one that would only cost about $160,000.

But the roof was only the beginning. The new elevators were already in need of repair, and so was the central plumbing system. Altogether, an additional $500,000 was needed to attend to these urgent matters, and no one knew where the money was to come from.

Some Dakotans argued that through the Landmarks Commission city funds should be made available to keep up at least the exterior of the old building. Restaurateur Warner LeRoy says, “I'm a great believer that the city should keep up the façades of landmarks. If the façade of the Dakota were sandblasted, it would be absolutely fantastic, one of those things that would keep the city alive.” But Commission chairman Beverly Spatt, while conceding that the tenant shareholders couldn't afford to spend the kind of money needed, said that if funds
were granted for the Dakota “then maybe two hundred other requests would come in, and I don't think the city is prepared to handle such a situation.”

Others suggested that a tax abatement would help give the building funds with which to do its own restoration. Economists pointed out that as the maintenance and operating costs of a building rise, a building becomes a less attractive place to live. In a spiral of rising costs the building could “succumb to success,” and would eventually have to be sold to a developer and destroyed—the very thing the Landmarks Preservation Commission was designed to prevent.

One thing was certain. Between 1969, when the Dakota had received its landmark designation, and 1972, the tenants' maintenance charges rose 42 percent to $439,988 a year, and there was no indication that they would not rise still higher. Clearly, to be a landmark was expensive. The Lawrence Ellmans, who bought Miss Leo's old apartment, considered it “grossly big,” and sold off 40 percent of it. Soon, however, their maintenance charges were more than when they divided the apartment. Rex Reed, who watched his monthly maintenance bills nearly double in four years' time, describes it as “an incredible nightmare. The mechanics are impossible. Repairs and alterations cost five times what they cost in an ordinary building. The financial feasibility of the building boggles the mind.” He adds, somewhat weakly, “But it's worth everything you go through—I guess.”

But the question began to be, how long would it be worth it? At the point when the Landmarks Commission seemed to be absolutely insistent that the Dakota install a million-dollar new roof, some Dakotans wondered if there might be a way to have the building
un
declared a landmark. But that, it seems, is not the way things work down at New York's City Hall. A landmark designation is not reversible. Once a building is declared a landmark, the Commission feels, a landmark it must remain—even though the little bronze plaque seems to carry with it the kiss of death.

Part Five

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Nay, not for us the steel and glass,

The click of automation
—

In our mahogany and brass

Is true luxuriation
—

And we in our Dakoterie

Are stalwart in defiance

Of all that tokens slavery

To the parade of science.

from “Ballad of the Dakota”

Chapter 14

The Park

City dwellers everywhere tend to be passionately chauvinistic about their parks, and it is not hard to see why. Parks remind urban men and women that the metropolis has not forsaken the countryside, and that greenery can coexist with asphalt and concrete. San Franciscans are fiercely proud of Golden Gate Park, Bostonians of the Common, Washingtonians of Rock Creek Park, Londoners of Hyde Park and Parisians of the Bois. Central Park is unquestionably one of New York's greatest civic centerpieces and showplaces. Simply, appropriately and unpretentiously named, and elegantly laid out, the Park is one of the things that makes New York life possible and gives it an oasis. To the Dakotans, the Park is even more: it is their front yard.

When the city purchased the acreage for Central Park in 1856, it did so not a moment too soon. Had it waited just a few more years it would have been too late. The land would have become far too valuable as commercial real estate, and what is now preserved as Central Park would be covered with asphalt and masonry.

The concept of Central Park was grandiose in scale, considering the
fact that in the 1850's the Park was by no means “central” to city life. It was, however, placed in roughly the center of Manhattan. It was an even half-mile wide and two and a half miles long which gave it over eight hundred acres, or more than twice the size of London's Hyde Park, which, prior to Central Park, had been the epitome of big-city parks. To Londoners in 1856 the size of New York's new park seemed outrageously pretentious. New York was a city of less than 700,000 people; London's population was 2,363,000, more than three times as large. The park took nearly ten years to build and cost over nine million dollars, a staggering sum in those days. By the end of the Civil War, most of the work on the park had been completed, though the problem of squatters' shacks—particularly in the park's northern reaches—would continue for a number of years.