A New Look Inside the Most Extravagant Apartment Building in NYC

The website for 432 Park Ave., the tallest residential spire in the Western Hemisphere and latest Manhattan investment for the super rich, boasts the building’s amenities: a billiards room, a spa, and apartments with marble panels and extraordinary views. Sounds great. Too bad another New York icon has had those beat … for the past 131 years.

The Dakota, located on the corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West, was one of the first luxury apartment buildings in New York and certainly the most lavish. The list of features included in historian Andrew Alpern’s coming book, The Dakota: A History of the World’s Best-Known Apartment Building, would make the average New Yorker weep: tennis courts, marble staircases, oak- and mahogany-paneled dining rooms, 14-foot ceilings, ornate fireplaces, and, of course, those Central Park views. The book is loaded with original floor plans, historic images of the interiors, and profiles of the building’s many notable residents through the years.