The Best Address for Less: Live in the Dakota for $1.85M

While it’s not exactly what we’d call affordable housing, you don’t have to be as rich as Yoko Ono or as famous as Lauren Bacall (whose apartment recently sold for $21 million) to live in the iconic Dakota overlooking Central Park. This pint-sized top-floor aerie on the Upper West Side offers a seriously rare chance to rub elbows with venerable co-op’s celebrity residents–and the memories of notable residents past–for a relatively earthbound $1.85 million.

Though there’s still the nearly $3,000 monthly co-op fee to contend with, it’s not often that a space here that isn’t a storage unit finds its way to the market for less than four or five million at the very least; there are currently three eight-figure units listed, including Roberta Flack’s pad and Judy Garland’s former home. And the one-bedroom apartment itself is just the bright and elegant pre-war gem you’d imagine it to be.

This one-bedroom charmer seems as if it once may have been a hallway or passageway (many of the building’s units have been sliced, spliced, merged and customized to create sprawling though odd-shaped dream homes) albeit a spacious one. But like most pre-war apartments, it’s configured so there’s plenty of room for people and their things.

The listing calls it a “beautiful old world oasis…Straight out of a fairytale book,” which doesn’t sound inaccurate. Throughout are elegant and well-kept pre-war details like gabled windows, a stained-glass panel, built-in-bookcases and hardwood floors, starting with a long, spacious living room, with windows lining one wall. A bright and tidy eat-in kitchen is both modern and vintage, with painted brick, renovated white cabinetry and updated appliances.

A serene bedroom (yes it’s true that a few coats of white paint can do wonders) gets a renovated ensuite bath and a huge walk-in closet fronted by a dressing area. Downside: Guests have to walk through your serene bedroom to access the bath.

Designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh and completed in 1884, the full-service, white-glove Dakota is a New York City landmark and national historic landmark. Though the building has a notoriously strict co-op board, the listing calls it a “perfect pied-a-terre” so they’re at least open to that possibility.

[Listing: 1 West 72nd Street, #97 by Victoria Terri-Cote and Cristina Cote for Town Residential]

[Via CityRealty]

RELATED:

• Judy Garland’s Former Dakota Apartment, Now a Designer Pad, Asks $16.7M
• Lauren Bacall’s $23.5M Dakota Apartment Finds a Buyer
• Live in Singer Roberta Flack’s Dakota Apartment for $9.5M
• Legends of the Upper West Side: The Past, Present, and Future of the Dakota

Images courtesy of Town Residential.