It’s not in the badlands anymore

Many people know the Dakota luxury co-op at Central Park West and 72nd Street mainly as the place where John Lennon lived with Yoko Ono for most of his last decade, and in front of which he was shot and killed in 1980. Others know it as the place where exterior shots of “Rosemary’s Baby” were filmed.

The Dakota, however, has a fascinating history, has been home to many other celebrities, and — according to some — is haunted.

When the Dakota was built in 1880-84, apartment houses that were not for the very poor were a relatively new concept in New York. The first middle-class apartment house, the Stuyvesant at 132 West 18th St., dated only to 1869. During the 1870s, the Upper West Side began to develop, but the area’s hilly topography discouraged builders. Much of the area was dominated by wooden cottages and shacks, and these took a long time to disappear. An illustration of the Dakota from “Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper” published in 1889 shows several wood-frame cottages a stone’s throw from the grand apartment house, complete with goats and geese foraging nearby.

The Dakota was built by prominent lawyer and businessman Edward Clark, a founding partner of the Singer Sewing Machine Co. He began building apartment houses several years beforehand, including the Wyoming, at Seventh Avenue and 55th Street.

To design the Dakota, Clark commissioned Henry Hardenburgh, who later designed the Hotel Martinique, the Waldorf-Astoria and the Plaza Hotel. Andrew Alpern, author of “The Dakota: A History of the World’s Best Known Apartment Building,” says that the oft-repeated story that the Dakota was so named because it was in such a remote location that it “might as well be in Dakota” is probably apocryphal. He points out that the story never appeared in print until 1933.

The Dakota was indeed luxurious for its time. The building has central heating, and was built with elevators when these were still a new technology. It originally had its own power plant, at a time when gas lights were the norm. Since the Dakota was built around a central courtyard, apartments receive light and air from two directions. And when it was built, it had croquet lawns and a tennis court behind the building as well as a playroom and gymnasium under the roof. It also featured a large main dining hall, from residents could order meals and have them delivered via dumbwaiters.

According to Stephen Birmingham’s “Life at the Dakota: New York’s Most Unusual Residence,” early residents were mainly successful “solid-citizen” types: merchants, brokers, lawyers, corporate executives. Even then, however, people with a connection to the arts lived in the building, including the Steinways of piano fame; and music publisher Gustav Schirmer, whose dinner guests included Herman Melville and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

As years went by, the Dakota was basically thought of as a well-built, prestigious, high-end apartment house, but not that different than many other older luxury buildings on the Upper West Side. An article in the New Yorker from 1932, for instance, called it “a solid, commodious, respectable building.” Its reputation as a residence for celebrities may have started when it became a co-op in the early 1960s.

Besides Lennon and Ono, other celebrities who have lived in the Dakota included Lauren Bacall, Leonard Bernstein, Rosemary Clooney, Roberta Flack, Judy Garland, Rudolf Nureyev and Gilda Radner. However, not every celebrity can get in. It’s been reported that Billy Joel, Carly Simon, Cher and Madonna are among those who could not secure an apartment there.

The Dakota is also famous for its ghosts. In an online compendium, “Ghosts of the Dakota,” Jessica Jewett mentions several. One, a little girl with long blonde hair and period dress who is bouncing a ball, has reportedly been seen by several residents. Another is a boy dressed in the style of the early 20th century wearing a Buster Brown haircut. Yet another ghost in the basement, whose appearance matches that of Dakota builder Edward Clark, has supposedly wreaked havoc, moving garbage bags around and throwing a heavy metal bar.

But the most famous sightings are those of people who claim they’ve seen the ghost of John Lennon himself. Several residents claimed they saw him, starting in 1983. According to some reports, Yoko Ono herself saw him sitting at his white piano and reassuring her that things would be OK.