Life at the Dakota Read online

  As far as Ernest Gross was able to ascertain that Friday evening, Mr. Zeckendorf had not become the Dakota’s landlord—yet. What Zeckendorf had done, it seemed, had been to make the Clark Foundation an offer of $4,500,000 to buy the building. He had made his offer at five o’clock on Friday and had given the Foundation until noon the following Monday to accept or reject it. The Foundation had indicated its willingness to accept, or so Mr. Gross was told, and Zeckendorf had already advanced a certain sum in what, in real estate parlance, is called “earnest money.” In his hastily arranged meeting with C. D. Jackson, Gross pointed out that the Dakota only had two and a half days—over a weekend, at that—to come up with a matching or perhaps better offer.

  A hasty meeting of Dakota tenants was called, in which Gross and Jackson attempted to explain the nature of the catastrophe, the disaster, that was at hand. All sorts of people whom nobody had seen before came out of the woodwork. Lauren Bacall, newly widowed and who had come into the Dakota only recently, sat on a table and shouted unprintable curses at all involved; she had just finished decorating her apartment at some expense. Beside her sat Judy Holliday, in tears; she had already been pronounced ill of incurable cancer and wanted to die in the building she considered home. Even old Miss E. Bruce Leo, who had not set foot outside her eighteen-room apartment in years, appeared in a picture hat and a long, trailing gown. Some said Miss Leo was already a hundred and two, and she had become the Dakota’s Madwoman of Chaillot. (Among other oddities, she kept a stuffed horse in her parlor.) “I will not be put out of my house! I will not be put out!” Miss Leo kept shouting. Almost everyone shouted, cursed, stamped, sobbed and pounded their chairs on the old dining room’s inlaid marble floor. The meeting had started in confusion, and quickly it became chaotic. Order was impossible, and when the meeting broke up it was not so much adjourned as dispersed as an angry, violent mob. Ernest Gross and C. D. Jackson returned to the Jackson’s apartment for drinks and to ponder how, if at all, the Dakota might be saved.

  What Gross and Jackson had discovered that night was that New Yorkers, in times of crisis, do not necessarily pull together. At that December meeting, everyone in the Dakota was pulling for himself, for his or her own precious place of residence. Sometimes, in times of crisis, people need a leader or captain, and co-captains were what Gross and Jackson decided that night to be. The sizes of the egos involved in the Dakota were such that they had to be brought under some firm command if anything at all were to be accomplished. The Dakota had often been called New York’s answer to Grand Hotel. It might, more aptly, have been compared with Ship of Fools or the Orient Express. Though there had never been, as far as is known, any actual murders at the Dakota Apartments, there had been a number of odd, untidy doings. All had had to do with the capricious and unruly egos of the Dakota’s passengers. Like a great ship, the Dakota had developed creaks and sighs and moans. Nevertheless, there had been compartments in which many people passed their days; there were stewards and porters—whose palms needed periodically to be greased—to care for their needs, and there had been someone continuously passing through to collect the fare. On board the Dakota some had been traveling grande luxe, in First Class accommodations, others had settled for Cabin Class, and still others had been in steerage. But now that it had been abandoned by the Clark family, the Dakota was a ship without a pilot, and, like the great luxury liners of the past, it seemed doomed.

  And yet, there were special problems. The Dakota was, after all, a part of New York City. All around it the restless seas of New York had seethed and surged and battered the Dakota’s tarnished sides. Those who called the Dakota home should have been more anxious about those seas because, for years, everything that had happened to the city of New York (and was to happen in large cities throughout the country) happened, in microcosm, to the Dakota. The building had come to represent everything that was pleasant and rewarding about life in New York, but it also reflected everything about New York life that was threatening, frightening and uncertain. Every battle or crusade that the city had undergone had also been confronted, on a smaller scale, at the Dakota. But no one had noticed much of this. The Dakota had been regarded by its residents as a charming anachronism, one that would never change. Now the Dakotans were discovering the truth of the ancient axiom that nothing is more certain than change—and they cared for this discovery not at all.

  As in any old structure, there had been strange, recurrent scuttlings—“mice in the walls.” The Dakota’s mice were both real and figurative—tiny creatures that had been nibbling and gnawing at the Dakota’s famous underpinnings of respectability, security, pride and doughty longevity. Behind the Dakota’s stern, implacable façade—the buff-colored brick, the carved Nova Scotia freestone trimmings, the niches, balconies and balustrades with spandrels and panels and cornices of terra cotta, the friezes and finials and gargoyles and oriel windows—changes had been taking place. Now Dakotans would have to face up to their existence, and swallow a bit of pride.

  One of the traditions at the Dakota had long been the annual gathering of tenants, at Christmas time, to sing carols in the building’s spacious inner courtyard. The singing was traditionally followed by hot buttered rum, cookies and sandwiches in the large fifth-floor apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Blanchard, who were among the building’s longtime residents. It was a time, once a year, when neighbors made at least a show of being neighborly, but for this sort of thing to happen once a year was considered quite sufficient. Celebrity tenants such as Miss Bacall, whom one scarcely saw during the balance of the year, made brief, gracious appearances, and the mood of these gatherings was generally polite and friendly. But the band of carolers that gathered in the chilly court on Christmas Eve of 1960 was edgy, nervous, frightened, confused by agitated rumors and speculation. But, for the first time, the distinct and disparate personalities who shared a roof at 1 West Seventy-second Street had something in common: uncertainty and fear of what was about to happen.

  Chapter 10

  The Rescue Team

  In 1907 old Mrs. Frederic Steinway had her usual list of complaints, which she passed along to the Clarks: “Porter service very bad. Dan drunk. Wet trunks, etc.… Elevator boys dirty; smell bad; dirty shoes; not shaven; dirty linen, etc. Complaint of Jim at the gate. Improper service in the way of opening carriage doors, holding umbrella on rainy days, carriages neglected for automobiles; general inattention. Table and dining room not up to the mark; maids’ table poor, not enough to eat.” Mrs. Steinway’s memorandum was only one of dozens with which the Clarks, as landlords, daily had to cope.

  In 1960, Messrs. Ernest Gross and C. D. Jackson, having taken the helm, found themselves battered with a similar series of proposals, criticisms and suggestions from the Dakota’s tenants. Some were realistic. It was suggested that the tenants go, en masse, down to the Clark Foundation in the old Singer Building and appeal for mercy “on our knees.” Someone suggested that Stephen Clark’s widow might be appealed to and persuaded to intercede on the building’s behalf. Other proposals were more wild-eyed. It was suggested that all the tenants arm themselves with pistols and, when the wreckers came, shoot it out with them, Western-style. Appeals to the Mayor, the Governor of New York, the President of the United States were suggested. At least one faction favored bringing in the Mafia to deal with Mr. Zeckendorf directly, and in no short order. During another, only slightly less disorganized meeting with the angry tenants, Ernest Gross said firmly, “We are here to decide two things: One, do we want to save the Dakota? Two, are we willing to admit that big rooms, high ceilings and low rents can no longer go hand in hand?” In other words, the Dakota might be saved, but it would cost money.

  From the outset both Gross and Jackson—one a lawyer, the other a magazine publisher—realized that what they both lacked was any sort of expertise in the field of real estate. At Gross’s suggestion a man named Peter Grimm of the firm of William A. White & Sons was brought in for consultation. Grimm was a suave, debonair and imme
nsely likable man, well versed not only in real estate but in the intricate and competitive ways of New York society. Realtors did not customarily swim in the perfumed upper waters of society, but Peter Grimm did, and he had an interesting suggestion. Mr. Louis Glickman, he pointed out, was a real estate man who had often engaged in deals with Zeckendorf. More important, Mr. and Mrs. Glickman had social ambitions—particularly in the art and music worlds—but they had recently suffered from perfectly dreadful press. It had involved Carnegie Hall, which the Glickman Corporation had acquired and announced plans to raze. This had created a terrible fuss throughout New York’s artistic community. Under the leadership of Isaac Stern and Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt, a Save Carnegie Hall Committee had been formed and the entire cultural community of New York had come forth to stand valiantly behind it. In the end the committee was successful, but in the process Louis Glickman had been virtually hanged in effigy. Realizing his sudden unpopularity, Glickman had done his best. At the suggestion of his press agent, Tex McCrary, Glickman had personally offered to pledge $100,000 to save Carnegie Hall, but in the stormy goings-on few people were impressed by this, and the name Glickman had become anathema in the world to which he aspired. Now, said Peter Grimm, if Mr. Glickman could be persuaded to save the Dakota—an address so dear to artists and musicians—some of the status that Glickman had lost over Carnegie Hall might be restored to him.

  On Sunday of the crucial weekend, four men—Gross, Jackson, Grimm and Glickman—sat down to lunch at the then all-male Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel, and quickly got down to business. Yes, Louis Glickman was interested. He knew the Dakota well. He had a number of friends who lived there. He agreed that the Dakota was a landmark, unique to New York, and should be saved. He was also particularly interested in the Dakota’s parking lot which adjoined the building’s west side, and which occupied nearly as much acreage as the building itself.

  The parking lot had originally contained the building’s private tennis and croquet courts. It had also been the site of a rose garden, and the roses had done particularly well, apparently because the garden was planted above the Dakota’s steam boiler room, sunk in the soil beneath. There had also been a grassed play area, suitably fenced, for tenants’ children, and a private grassed run for tenants’ dogs. During World War I, Dakotans had turned a plot of this land under and had planted peas, potatoes, asparagus, carrots, cauliflower and lettuce in their own patriotic little victory garden, “to help our country in its time of need.”

  In the early days of the Dakota, west-facing apartments—even though the west side of the building contained the basement service entrance—were in great demand not only for the garden view but because turn-of-the century women liked to sit in their windows overlooking the tennis courts to observe, for example, which ladies wore short skirts and which gentlemen removed their shirts.

  By 1960, however, the rose garden and the tennis courts were just a romantic memory shared by a few old-timers. During the Depression, in order to supply the building with more revenue, this entire area had been converted to the more mundane use of parking cars. At the time, Mr. Stephen Clark, accompanied by his uniformed chauffeur carrying a lap robe, had personally visited his tenants to convey the sad news, saying, “In New York, all good things must go.” During the 1960 Christmas Crisis his words echoed ominously.

  Mr. Glickman wanted to be sure that if the building were sold, the parking lot would go with it. He was assured that it would. He then came up with a proposition. Glickman proposed to offer the Clark Foundation $4,600,000 for the property, slightly more than the $4,500,000 that had been purportedly offered by Zeckendorf. Glickman, who was then in a position to do so, would offer the Foundation cash. He would then arrange for mortgage financing and set up a procedure whereby the Dakota’s residents could buy individual apartments back from the Glickman Corporation for a total price of $4,800,000—a profit to Glickman of a mere $200,000—thus turning the building into a cooperative, owned by tenant shareholders. To Messrs. Gross and Jackson, $200,000 seemed a modest price to pay. There seemed to be very little time in which to find another savior, and here was Louis Glickman, with cash, offering immediate salvation. The details of making the building a cooperative could be worked out over the long months ahead, but Louis Glickman was the bird in the hand.

  Louis Glickman also wanted the parking lot, but to Gross and Jackson, in their agitated state, this seemed the easiest of things to give up. They agreed that if the deal went through, the parking lot would be Glickman’s. The two men returned to another anxious gathering of tenants and announced that a man had come forth to help them save the building, and that his name was Louis J. Glickman.

  Considering the number of strange occurrences that have punctuated the Dakota’s long history, it is not surprising that the story of the Christmas Crisis of 1960 should contain a puzzling mystery of its own. The mystery revolves around two questions. The first: Was the Dakota, despite the certainty of its tenants during those anxiety-ridden days, ever really threatened with demolition? And the second: What were the precise roles of the two New York real estate men, William J. Zeckendorf and Louis J. Glickman?

  What is certain is that on Monday morning following the Plaza lunch Mr. Glickman offered the Clark Foundation $4,600,000 cash for the Dakota and the parking lot. The Foundation accepted Glickman’s offer, and Glickman, as he had promised to do, embarked upon the long process—it would take the better part of the following year—of selling the building back to the tenants as a cooperative, keeping the parking lot for himself. This he was soon able to sell for $2,000,000 to the Mayfair Corporation, which quickly drew up plans to erect a twenty-seven-story apartment tower where the rose gardens had been and where ladies and gentlemen of another era had played tennis and croquet. The Mayfair Tower, of course, would throw the entire west flank of the Dakota into permanent shadow, to the dismay of all Dakotans with west-facing apartments.

  Though there were still misgivings in the building—some tenants felt that they could not afford to buy their apartments, while others knew that maintaining their apartments as cooperatives would cost them far more in monthly charges than they had paid in rents—there was still the undeniable relief that Glickman had saved the Dakota from the grasp of Mr. Zeckendorf and his wreckers’ ball.

  Time plays tricks on memories to be sure, but at least one Dakota resident has an entirely different recollection of what happened. According to Mrs. Henry Blanchard it was not Mr. Zeckendorf who announced he was buying the building and going to tear it down but Mrs. Zeckendorf. Winifred Cecil Blanchard and her husband are well-respected, if not commanding, figures at the Dakota. He has been called the building’s unofficial nursemaid and she, a former operatic soprano of some note (and before her marriage to Blanchard, the Baroness Mazzonis di Pralafera) is still, despite a lingering illness, an ample, cheerful woman of easily elicited opinions. “I remember it perfectly,” she says. “Mrs. Zeckendorf came up to me and said, ‘My husband has just bought your building, and he’s going to tear it down.’ That was when we all panicked.”

  Mrs. Zeckendorf denies that she ever made such a remark.

  Mr. William Zeckendorf has since died, but Mr. Louis Glickman is still alive and very much in the real estate business. Today Mr. Glickman says, “Bill Zeckendorf was never involved at all. Not in any way. He was never in the picture, not even for a minute. People may think he was because he and I had put together a couple of deals before that, and people associated my name with his, and vice versa. What’s more, there was never a question of tearing the building down. It just wouldn’t have been feasible. The building is built like the Rock of Gibraltar. It would have cost more to tear it down than the property was worth. The people at the Dakota came to me because the Clark Foundation wanted to sell it and they needed my know-how to help them turn it into a co-op. They were babes in the woods. I helped them pull it off.”

  But if there was “never a question” of tearing the building down, and if William Zeckendorf
was “never involved,” then who made that Friday telephone call to Ernest Gross, saying he was Zeckendorf, the “new landlord,” with the thinly veiled threat of demolition? One cannot question the honesty nor the memory of Ernest Gross. Perhaps the Christmas Crisis, the whole panic, was engineered by someone else as part of a deception, a hoax on someone’s part to get the building disposed of in a hurry.

  To confuse matters even more, Grace Jackson, C. D. Jackson’s widow, today has yet another set of recollections about the crucial events of December 1960. According to Mrs. Jackson, Mr. Zeckendorf called Mr. Jackson, not Mr. Gross, to say, “I’m your new landlord.” Furthermore, Grace Jackson blames the whole crisis on the shilly-shallying tactics of Matthew S. Ely & Company, the real estate firm that had been handling the building. “We’d asked the Ely people to make an offer to the Clark Foundation long before Zeckendorf called C. D., told him he’d paid his earnest money, and was going to close the deal the following Monday morning. Later, Ely explained that he’d never submitted our bid because he knew he couldn’t match Zeckendorf. After that we got rid of Ely.” In a story that now has more versions than Rashomon, it is possible that the actual truth will never be known.

  Experts in the field of New York real estate, meanwhile, point out that William Zeckendorf would not have had the $4,500,000 he allegedly offered to buy the Dakota in 1960. By that year the affairs of Zeckendorf and his company, Webb & Knapp, were already becoming hopelessly tangled. Zeckendorf had by then vastly overextended himself, and had begun his long toboggan ride to eventual disgrace and the bankruptcy courts.