The Dakota Building: Where John Lennon Lived

John Lennon lived in the imposing Dakota Building in the Upper West Side until his murder in 1980, a tragedy that happened right outside the building's doors.

If you're a Beatles fan, the Dakota is an essential pilgrimage site.

What to see near the Dakota Building

Don't get your hopes up, because you won't be able to go inside the Dakota Building. The residents of this elegant building have made sure to keep us out. So admire it from the sidewalk unless you want trouble with the doormen.

One interesting detail: Yoko Ono still lives in the 9-room apartment she shared with Lennon in the Dakota Building. If you want to know more about her life, there's an excellent article in El País.

Strawberry Fields

As soon as you cross the street into Central Park you'll run into Strawberry Fields, the garden in Central Park dedicated to John Lennon, with the much-photographed Imagine mosaic brought over from Pompeii itself.

The dark legend of the Dakota

Plenty of people like to say this building is cursed. Google it and you'll find several occult websites linking it to satanism.

Urban myths aside, it's a fact that the building's architecture fires up the imagination. Add Lennon's murder, and the fact that Hollywood has fed the legend by using it as a location for classic horror movies.

The Dakota Building on screen

Film buffs will recognize the Dakota from Roman Polanski's classic «Rosemary's Baby«: the Dakota is where Rosemary (Mia Farrow) lived, along with the coven stalking her.

In Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Stanley Kubrick's final film, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman lived in the Upper West Side.

Tom Cruise  got to «live» in the neighborhood again in Vanilla Sky (2001), and in the famous Dakota, no less.

Architecture of the Dakota Building

The Dakota was built in 1880 by the same architects behind the elegant Plaza Hotel. Its style is German Renaissance with heavy French influence, like so many other buildings in the Upper West Side.

The original plan called for just 65 apartments, all different, the smallest with 4 rooms and the largest with up to 20 rooms!

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Address

1 West 72nd Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan

Getting there

Subway lines A, B, C. 72 St station.