Residential building Dakota Apartments are usually referred to simply as Dakota. This is one of the most prestigious buildings in Manhattan - Apartment in it can cost up to $ 30 million. Here lived the actress Judy Garland, composer Leonard Bernstein, actor Boris Karloff, dancer Rudolf Nureyev, but the world knows Dakota is not because of these famous names. World famous Dakota acquired when there was killed John Lennon.

The building was built in 1884 for Edward Clark, head of the company "Singer". It is believed the house was named so because it was away from the then New York, but most likely, Clark just like the names of the new western states. The project has developed an architectural Bureau "Henry Janeway Hardenberg." The high gable roof with lots of skylights, balconies and balustrades talk about the style of northern German Renaissance, but the inside of the building shows the influence of French architecture.

65 apartments (from four- to dvadtsatikomnatnyh) high (4 meters) ceilings and floors of fine wood were bilateral - an innovation at the time. The apartments are designed individually, but the bedrooms and living rooms are always facing the street, while the other rooms - in a quadrangular courtyard. The wide arch of the main entrance on 72th Street West allowed a free pass to the crews and their passengers - get in and out without hurry in case of rain or snow. The house has been stable, power, central heating, gym, tennis courts. All of the apartments were occupied immediately.

Dakota has always been popular among the wealthy New Yorkers. John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono settled here in 1973 after their former apartment in Greenwich Village was robbed. The respectable Dakota, thought they would be safer to live.

8 December 1980 twenty-five Mark David Chapman was waiting at the main gate Lennon Dakota, in the shadow of the arch. About eleven in the evening, John and Yoko came into the arch. Chapman shot Lennon five times in the back. Porter Dakota taken out of the hands of the murderer pistol and shouted: "You know what to do? ". "Yes, - replied calmly Chapman - I shot John Lennon."

Later, Chapman said was furious blasphemy by Lennon when he said he is more popular than Jesus, as well as the inconsistency of the text of the song Imagine Lennon and personal wealth. Maybe Penthouse Dakota as proof that wealth also played a tragic role.

Yoko Ono and now lives in the penthouse (large turret on the corner of 72th and Central Park West). Chapman is still in prison. In 1985, when Lennon would have turned 45 years old, a small area in Central Park, directly opposite the Dakota, called "Strawberry Fields" - "Strawberry Fields." Quiet area in hectares lined with trees, symbolically donated by different countries. The heart of "Strawberry Fields" - mosaic, the gift of Naples: a strict pattern, and in the center of the word Imagine. There are always flowers, often arranged in the form of the sign of peace.