Life at the Dakota (31 page)

“When Greenfield ran it, there were only a couple of board meetings a year. Now they meet once a month, and the meetings go on for hours into the night. The new group then set up committees galore—a hospitality committee, a bricks committee, a courtyard committee, an employees committee. This just confuses the employees. The employees don't know who's running the building. When you have a board that gets involved in day-to-day doings, you get chaos, inevitably. Of course it's a crazy building. It defies every law—of economics and nature. But what have they got now? They've got tenants who are seriously in arrears with their maintenance payments. They've got a $2,700,000 morgage, and no working capital.

“What's going to happen,” this real estate man wonders aloud, “when Judgment Day comes?”

When the revolution was over, someone commented wrily, “The winners were victorious, but the losers were lucky.”

But out of all the anger and name-calling and heartache of the Revolution, a number of good things came to the Dakota like flowers sprouting out of the ashes of war. A certain community feeling was observed in the building in the Revolution's aftermath. “Before,” says architect Paul Segal, “this was just a typical anonymous place where nobody really knew their neighbors. But during the heat and all the
sturm und drang,
we discovered ourselves. There might be ill will between old friends, but many more new friends evolved out of it.” Today, few people entertain at the Dakota without including several of their neighbors in the building, a situation that never existed at the Dakota before and one that is quite unusual in New York City.

The Revolution was the beginning of the tradition of the October Courtyard Party, the likes of which had not been seen in the building since the celebratory party in 1961 when the building became a cooperative. The October Party is a sort of church supper affair, with each family bringing a separate dish. Rex Reed, for example, likes to cook his lemon icebox pies to go with Lauren Bacall's brownies. Eugenia Sheppard makes spinach salad, and Warner LeRoy supplies dishes ranging from chili to
blanquette de veau.
Each year courtly old Lewis Galantiere used to contribute a hundred fresh oysters from the Century Club. The John Lennons cook
sushi,
and one year handed out gift copies of a book on the virtues of organic food to everyone. Roberta Flack fixes spoon bread. At these parties there may be as many as twenty-five little children running about. Only once, since 1971, has it rained for a Dakota October Courtyard Party, and when that happened, the party simply moved under the spacious vaulted entrance archway.

Out of the Revolution, too, came the annual
Dakota Directory,
the Dakota's own telephone book and social register, listing home and office telephone numbers, wives' and childrens' names, and Dakotans' summer addresses and telephone numbers. The
Dakota Directory
is a valued document because it lists the very private and unlisted telephone numbers of quite a few famous people.

True, the new trees that were planted in the courtyard did not
survive. The courtyard gets full sunshine for no more than an hour or so each day. But the stone planters in the center of the court were then planted with azaleas, and these have done well and afford a fine spring show of blooms.

Finally, once the dust of the Revolution had settled, one of the first pieces of business was what to do with the dread little black book. Unanimously, it was voted that it be destroyed.

The man assigned the task of disposing of it was lawyer George Beane. Naturally, when he had the book in his possession he could not resist a brief look at its contents. As a ledger, it seemed to him an indecipherable collection of hieroglyphics. Perhaps it was in code, and perhaps somewhere there was a key to it, but most of the writing in it was illegible. Later, when the Dakota's Palace Revolution would be spoken of in terms of Watergate, and the little black book would assume the proportions of the “smoking gun” in the Nixon tapes, it was hard for Beane to believe that the book contained that much of consequence. Still, he did as he was told and consigned it to the incinerator.

*
This was probably a veiled reference to Henry Blanchard who, though he was one of the most popular people in the building, did not actually own any stock in it. The Blanchards' apartment was owned by their old friend John de Cuevas, who lived in Long Island.

Chapter 20

Deals

To some of the older Dakotans, including Winnie Bodkin, one of the most striking changes that has occurred in recent years is the way the quality of conversation—or even gossip—has deteriorated. In 1922, for example, there was good subject for talk in the new traffic-control lights that had just been placed on Fifth Avenue. These were the objects of wonder, not only for their up-to-dateness but also for the rather shocking fact that each traffic light was topped with a bronze statuette of a naked man—the god Mercury wearing nothing but a World War I infantryman's helmet. And of course the uptown telephone circuits buzzed with the usual talk of mistresses, lovers, showgirls and scandal, but it was all quite harmless and inconsequential.

Today, however, talk at the Dakota has taken on a tougher, harder, less pleasant edge. When Dakotans meet, their conversation tends to fall into one of three general categories—money, and how much everything costs; parties, who is giving them and inviting whom; and how well—or poorly—the building is being run. “People don't seem to converse any more,” says Winnie Bodkin, “they carp.” Of course this
could be a reflection of the way conversation in the city of New York has changed.

There is carping about the way some people have turned the Dakota itself into a business of sorts. A number of tenants have purchased rooms on the eighth and ninth floors which they use as servants' or storage rooms. (The Blanchards' cook lives up there, and so does Leonard Bernstein's housekeeper.) But others have bought rooms which they rent out to other people, and from which they derive income. Though this is not uncommon practice, some people in the building rather frown on this, but there is legally nothing wrong with it. Ever since the building went co-operative, there has been a certain amount of intramural wheeling and dealing in the building, with apartments being bought, sold and traded by tenants to one another. Since
Rosemary's Baby
“put the Dakota on the map” (even though only exterior shots of the building were filmed), it has acquired a spookily romantic aura. And particularly in the years since 1976, when the entire country began a real estate boom that sent costs of housing spiraling upward, Dakota apartments have turned out to be exceptionally lucrative investments.

When an apartment becomes available, the building learns it first, and quite often, the apartment will be snapped up by another tenant, refurbished and sold for a profit to yet another tenant. In 1976, for example, Daniel and Barbara Quinn bought apartment 212 for $14,620—not to live in, since they already lived in apartment 55. A year later the Quinns were able to sell 212, which only has one room and one bath, to Patrick O'Neal for $18,000, a profit of roughly 25 percent. In the meantime the O'Neals had bought Joan Bingham's big apartment (ten rooms, four baths) for $115,000 to live in, and have since acquired three more apartments for extra space. One hundred and fifteen thousand dollars for that much space was a steal for the O'Neals in 1977, because by 1978 apartment 15 (seven rooms, two-and-a-half baths) went for $120,000, which was what the Quinns got when they sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Seymour Terry.

The temptation to parlay apartments and make big money in the process becomes understandable, in light of the way Dakota prices began escalating in 1976 and 1977. In 1976 a nine-room three-and a-half bath apartment, carrying with it 860 shares of Dakota voting stock, sold for $115,000. In 1978, a smaller apartment—eight rooms
and three baths, and 780 shares of stock—sold for $150,000. Paul Goldberger bought his apartment in 1976 for $42,000, and fixed it up. By 1978 he estimated that he could sell it for at least $100,000. The same year, George Davison-Ackley estimated that his might bring a quarter of a million dollars.

Michael Wager is an actor who played with Ruth Ford in
Six Characters in Search of an Author.
In 1974 he was looking for an apartment, and Miss Ford suggested the Dakota. He bought apartment 53-C for around $50,000—it had five rooms and two baths—and redecorated it handsomely, covering the walls with Fortuny fabric, among other things. Downstairs, meanwhile, the Larry Ellmans were in the process of dividing their “grossly large” apartment, for which they had also paid around $50,000 in 1967, and were planning to sell off roughly 40 percent of it. By 1976 Michael Wager was able to sell 53-C to Robert Renfield for $100,000 and to buy the Ellman's 40 percent for $50,000. He even came out with one more room in the deal, and, naturally, he brought his Fortuny downstairs with him. He immediately began to redecorate, confident that he will be able to sell the maisonette and double his money again. For an actor, whose work is at best uncertain, buying and selling Dakota apartments can provide an important source of income. Wager claims that not long ago he saw a coffin being carried down the stairs. He immediately inquired, “Whose apartment is available?”

Nor are the Ellmans at all unhappy. They doubled their money too.

Of course there is nothing illegal or improper about all these in-house business dealings, but some Dakotans find them all—well, a little regrettable.

There are rumors, meanwhile, that John Lennon would like to buy the entire building, and Lennon does seem to require rather a lot of space for his relatively small family. By the early part of 1979 Lennon and his wife owned some twenty-eight rooms throughout the Dakota. And some business deals in the building have been less than profitable.

Michael Wager, who insists that you can “just take” doors and moldings from the basement in re-doing an apartment, likens the Dakota to “a kibbutz.” There are two Israelis in the building—Gil Shiva and Gyora Novak—and Wager's late father was Meyer Weisgal, chancellor of the Chaim Weizmann Institute. “Gil Shiva's brother was my father's chauffeur,” Wager sniffs, but adds, “It's all very cozy. The
Shivas call down to borrow dishes, Ruth Ford rings up to have me for dinner.” And things other than apartments are traded back and forth. The Dale Kellers' two boys had outgrown their Japanese nanny, and so the Kellers gave the nanny to the Lennons for young Sean. A very courtly black gentleman named Vassal Thomas had worked on and off for Michael Wager, helping him with parties. Mr. Thomas is a figure of some social standing in Harlem, and helps run the annual “Evening of Elegance,” a major fund-raising event of New York's black upper crust. When Lauren Bacall was looking for a cook-houseman, Wager suggested Mr. Thomas. Some time later Mr. Thomas announced to Mr. Wager, “I've just fired Miss Bacall.” Wager asked how this had come about. Pointing to the enunciator call-button in the kitchen, Mr. Thomas said, “Do you see that button? Miss Bacall rang it once too often.”

Just as the quality of conversation has changed in New York, so has the quality of entertaining, and if George Templeton Strong were still around, he might be moved to comment again, “How New York has fallen off!” In the 1880's and 1890's, when the Dakota was young, New York was in the middle of an era of extravagant party-giving which will probably never be seen again. James Hazen Hyde gave his $200,000 ball at Sherry's, at which the ballroom was transformed into a replica of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Suddenly every host and hostess of worth in New York was trying to outdo him—often with results that strained the imagination. Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, for example, gave her famous Monkey Dinner in the 1890's, where the guest of honor, in full evening dress, was a monkey, who was solemnly introduced as Prince del Drago. This was followed by a Dog Dinner, at which the honored guests, wearing their mistresses' finest jewels, were canine pets. Perhaps the oddest entertainment of that blithe period was the Horseback Dinner given in 1903 by Mr. C. K. G. Billings. For this party, also at Sherry's, the ballroom was filled with live trees and shrubs to represent a forest glade. The floor was sodded, and all about the room “blue bloods of the equine world” were hitched at mangers filled with hay. Strapped to the flanks of each horse was a table. Guests, in formal riding attire, mounted their assigned horses and were served course after course of food by waiters dressed as grooms. From the shoulders of each horse, meanwhile, were slung two saddlebags, each filled with
ice and bottles of champagne. As they dined, the guests sipped champagne through nippled rubber tubes that ran down to the saddlebags.

And yet, if this sort of thing all seems a far cry from the disco doings of the 1970's at such popular watering places as Studio 54, where strange weeds are smoked and exotic chemicals sniffed, it would be well to remember that on every fashionable lady's dressing table in the 1890's stood a bottle of something called Tilden's Extract. It cost six cents for half an ounce and could be purchased at any drug store in the city. It was recommended for “over-wrought hostesses,” who were advised to take a small dose before receiving guests or going out to dinner, to prepare them for the “rigors” of the evening ahead. Tilden's was pure extract of hashish.

The courtyard of the Dakota has been the scene of a number of gala entertainments over the years—weddings, receptions, bar mitzvahs—and each time one of them occurs the Dakotans remind themselves that the Dakota is a cozy, one-big-happy-family sort of place, a community within a community. At the courtyard parties a spirit of neighborhood coffee klatch is usually encouraged, though sometimes things go wrong. When Michael Wager was having a bar mitzvah for his son, he asked his caterer to set up tables in the courtyard. A little later, he noticed that, on someone's orders, the tables were being removed. Wager stormed out. For week's he had been complaining to the board about the courtyard's clogged drains. “If I own the courtyard,” he said, “put back the tables. If you own it, fix the drains.” The tables were put back.