Life at the Dakota (23 page)

At the Dakota the renovation of apartment 21 involved the removal of a partition. Before that was done, Suzanne Weinstein swears, her apartment never trembled when the Eighth Avenue subway rolled by underneath. Now it does. Floors that didn't use to squeak now squeak.

In the Dakota's basement caves are stacked all sorts of interior architectural details that have been removed from Dakota apartments in a long series of renovations. There is a roomful of old doors, another of moldings, another of cornices, another of mantelpieces, another of hardware. They are intended to be labeled and catalogued, indicating from which apartment each item originated, so that, if some future tenant wished, these details could be restored. But in the dampness of their basement morgue, many fine pieces are crumbling into rot and decay. Items, too, have had a way of disappearing, as one of the old elevator cages disappeared. If an apartment is being restored, one is not supposed to go to the basement and just take a pretty door. But this has happened. Like most old buildings, the Dakota has had a long series of superintendents, and there is always the suspicion that at various times superintendents have been tempted to sell certain items. A while back a truck filled with old mantels was seen departing from the
Dakota's basement service entrance. Where these pieces of cabinetwork were bound, no one knew, but it is quite certain that they never came back.

Frederic Weinstein and others—for he is not alone in his sentiments—feel that the time has come to call a halt to renovations that require structural or near-structural changes in the building. Modernizing kitchens and bathrooms is one thing, these people feel (one basement room is filled with nothing but old bathtubs and sinks). But ripping out walls is quite another. Weinstein is painfully reminded of “the virtual collapse of the White House during the Truman Administration as a consequence of generations of uncoordinated renovation.”

But Dakotans like Weinstein were also concerned about matters other than the fact that repeated renovations—involving removal and relocation of walls and beams and ceilings—might eventually weaken the building's skeleton to the point where it would topple. There was also the knotty question of aesthetics and taste. Architectural purists at the Dakota were nervously reminded of the “desecration” that was committed upon such buildings as 910 Fifth Avenue. That gracious Italianate apartment house was put up in 1920 and then, in 1959, was completely gutted and stripped to its steel skeleton, losing in the process its handsome friezes, cornices and balustrades. What stands at 910 Fifth Avenue today has been called a “dreadful parody” of what the building once was. At the Dakota the building's elaborate interior details were part of its special history and its special character. Some renovations were so extreme that they violated the Dakota's history, raped its character. Where did interior decoration leave off and desecration begin? Then there was a legal question. Certainly an individual who owns an apartment has certain rights to alter and renovate it to suit his needs, tastes and wishes. But the Dakota was different; it deserved special consideration. It was sacrilege, some people felt, to tamper with the Dakota's gracious old rooms and their elaborate, Old World details.

A great deal of tampering, meanwhile, had already been done, and many of the building's interior spaces bore little resemblance to the
fin-de-siècle
chambers they had once been. In the name of modernization a number of Mr. Hardenbergh's extravagant and fanciful touches had been removed, and, in some cases, his very concept for the Dakota's interior had been arrogantly defied. It had occurred to some tenants, for example, that if a big room could be divided vertically, it
could also be divided horizontally. If one had a fifteen-foot ceiling, why not build a loft, or platform, with stairs leading up to it, thus creating an additional room under the ceiling. One of the first people to do this was Betty Friedan, who was then married and who decided to build sleeping platforms for her children. This was innovative, but it turned one high-ceilinged room into two low-ceilinged ones. Was this right, aesthetically? Instead of a sense of space one achieved a sense of claustrophobia. Was this right, morally, to do to the Dakota? If one didn't want the Dakota's high ceilings, perhaps one should live somewhere else. If one wanted lofts, why not build them in Greenwich Village? Mrs. Friedan also did other things, such as paint over marble fireplaces, which struck her neighbors as sacrilegious. But a number of people copied her sleeping-loft idea.

By the mid-1970's the building became aesthetically divided between the traditionalists, who wanted to preserve the old details, and the revisionists, who wanted to change things around. One tenant painstakingly, and at great expense, had the woodwork in her apartment stripped of the layers of paint that had accumulated over the years, and taken down to its original, natural golden glow. But when she sold her apartment the new owner promptly covered the old wood-work with paint again. One of the building's many committees was the Aesthetics Committee, which deplored such doings, but with no real power to enforce its aesthetic standards, all it could do was cluck its tongue when they occurred.

Lauren Bacall is decidedly on the side of the traditionalists, and her apartment, which she has decorated herself, recalls the stately apartments on the Avenue Foch in Paris. She has furnished it with antiques. “Furniture has to be old and good,” she says. “I love French Regency, Provincial, and pieces from India and Morocco. When it comes to decorating, I prefer to do it myself. I have never been able to find a decorator I could communicate with in terms of me.” In her front hallway a chest from Damascus houses a collection of Oriental monkeys, along with opaline and old pewter pieces. Her apartment, the traditionalists say, is what a Dakota apartment
ought
to look like. So is Leonard Bernstein's. In fact, Bernstein's late wife was so in favor of turning back the clock that for years she waged an unsuccessful campaign to have the electric street lamps outside the Dakota replaced with gas fixtures.

Freddie Victoria, as would be expected of a man who deals in art
and antiques, has carefully preserved his sculptured-plaster “birthday cake” ceilings, and one of the remarkable features of his living room is the way he has treated his windows. At a glance they seem to be framed with festoons of flowing silk. But the effect is
trompe l'oeil,
and the “draperies” are not draperies at all but lambrequins made of hand-carved and painted wood—executed by craftsmen in his own shop. The apartment also contains Mr. Victoria's extraordinary collection of antique clocks—some seventy in number and all in perfect working order—including a spectacular clock chandelier (one must stand beneath it and look upward to read its face). The clocks tick and chime peacefully throughout the apartment.

Judy and Gyora Novak straddle the fence somewhat between the traditionalist and revisionist point of view, but most Dakotans feel that the Novaks have treated their apartment splendidly, considering what they had to work with. When they bought the building's old dining room on the ground floor it lacked baths, a kitchen, closets, and even walls where it opened from the public corridor. The marble floor of the big main room had been layered with so many years of wax that it was almost black. The Novaks had the marble cleaned and restored to its original white, with a colored border. From what were pantries and storage rooms, the Novaks created a kitchen-pantry, a guest bathroom, and a combination library-guest room off the main room. What was originally the “little” dining room, designed for private parties, became the Novaks' bedroom, with a master bath, dressing room and closets.

At Philip Johnson's suggestion, the walls of the apartment were upholstered in oyster-white carpeting to deaden the sound of the subway below and to provide a soft backdrop for the Novaks' paintings and sculpture. The mahogany doors and coffered ceiling, which had been of a light-brown color, were cleaned and rubbed a black-brown to avoid casting reddish reflections on the paintings, and the old brass hardware was blackened to avoid glitter. All glossy surfaces were toned down. The white marble floor was given a no-gloss finish, and a non-shiny finish was applied to the snuff-colored leather with which the benches, sofas and dining chairs were covered. Modern touches included big globe lighting and can-shaped spotlights that are adjustable on ceiling tracks. Outside light is controlled by adjustable vertical louvers of heavy oyster-colored fabric at the windows. From the main apartment a staircase leads down to an area the Novaks reclaimed from the Dakota's
basement. This includes a small reception room for Mr. Novak's clients, and a huge, white-walled studio lit by powerful lights, where Gyora Novak sculpts, paints, and designs jewelry and mens' clothing.

Upstairs, on the sixth floor, Dr. and Mrs. Scott Severns have retained their apartment's original amber-colored mahogany doors, moldings, window frames, its heavy brass hardware, fireplaces, parquet floors and carved ceilings. Otherwise the Severns' decor is starkly modern. The long, wide living room is sparsely furnished, dominated by a grand piano from which Mrs. Severns gives occasional lessons. A huge abstract painting, some twenty feet long and ten feet high, covers one wall. The room is furnished with Mies van der Rohe's famous Barcelona chairs, but Mrs. Severns likes to point out that “the really comfortable pieces” were designed by Philip Johnson, who happens to be her brother. (The apartment also affords a view of a new Philip Johnson building across the park.) The Severns' library is called the Andy Warhol Room, and its walls are hung only with paintings by the artist—the Marilyn Monroe, the Jackie Kennedy, the poppy pictures and so on. One room that Mrs. Severns has not chosen to modernize is her kitchen. Though large and comfortable, it is decidedly old-fashioned.

To Theodate Johnson Severns the Dakota's connotations will always be romantic. Mrs. Severns is a small, peppery person with boyishly cut gray hair, an emphatic manner, and a collection of Siamese and Abyssinian cats. “The Blanchards called me in late August of 1961,” she says. “They said, ‘Come, come quick, there's an apartment available.' I came, and I brought Scott with me. I had been married before, and it hadn't worked out. I hadn't really thought much about getting married again. I looked at the apartment, and it seemed enormous. Everything was painted a hideous elephant gray. I thought, how can I ever fill this up with furniture? I said no, no, it's just too much apartment for me. Then Scott looked at me and said, ‘Who said you had to take it alone?' And he handed me the deed to apartment sixty-four. We were married three days later—to take advantage of the long Labor Day weekend.

“It had been Emmett Hughes's apartment. The Andy Warhol room was a bedroom which he had rented out to a paying guest. There are so many reasons why we love living here. It's more than just the space and the four-inch thick doors. It really
is
like one big
family. Oh, we have our little spats and differences. But even when we fight we fight like a family. No one entertains without including some of the Dakota neighbors—that's something that never happens in most New York buildings. The other day we had a party for Virgil Thomson. First there was a screening of a film in Warner LeRoy's movie room. Then everyone came back for cocktails and dinner here. It's a real
community.

“Of course we pay for it. We pay more maintenance than the most expensive rental buildings in the city. It's a question of: If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it. But it's a good investment. This apartment has tripled in value since we bought it. But it's more than that. It's the funny little things that happen. The other day I got into a taxi and gave the driver my address, and he turned around to me and said, ‘Lady, can I ask you a question?' I said I'd try to answer. He said, ‘Is it true that in that building they even have fireplaces in the bathrooms?' And the old people, like the Brownings. The other day I had a note from Adele Browning, and it was written on the back of a 1914 letter. There's a sense of continuity here, a sense of life, a sense of
fertility.
Take the Novaks' parrots, for example. The Novaks have some rare parrots which, they were told, would never lay eggs in captivity. They never did lay eggs, until the Novaks moved here. When they got to the Dakota, the parrots started laying eggs right away! It's something in the air.…”

Downstairs, on the first floor, in what is roughly 60 percent of what was once Miss Leo's old apartment, the Larry Ellmans have chosen to go the traditionalist route, keeping the original details and covering walls with rich fabrics, decorating with antiques to create a turn-of-the-century mood. Larry Ellman, however—the former owner of Longchamps and now the proprietor of the Cattleman Restaurant—has gone all out on his kitchen, fitting it with every modern appliance conceivable. Next door, in the remainder of what was Miss Leo's apartment before the Ellmans divided it, actor Michael Wager occupies the Dakota's only “maisonette” apartment, with its own private entrance from the courtyard. Wager, too, is a traditionalist, decorating with antiques and covering his walls with Fortuny fabric to create an effect, as he puts it, of “instant Old Money.”

Princess Mona Faisal, whose father founded the Arab League, is married to Mohamet Faisal, the son of Saudi Arabia's king. She and
her brother Issam Azzam share a large Dakota apartment that is all done in pale desert colors and is considered one of the loveliest and most peaceful in the building. Some think it amusing to note that Michael Wager, an ardent Zionist whose father headed the Chaim Weizmann Institute, lives directly below the Arab princess.

When King Faisal was visiting the United States, the story goes, there was no time on his schedule for a personal call on his son and daughter-in-law, but the king was driven past the Dakota. “Ah,” he said, looking up at the building, “I see that my son has bought a castle.” Of course the story may be apocryphal. Many Dakota stories are.