Skating in Central Park
December 1859: After a decade of debate, designs and construction, the first part of the Park is opened – from the Lake south to 59th Street. 100,000 people make the trip North to ice-skate on the Lake by moonlight.

Behind the skaters is the famous Dakota Building, later to be the last home of John Lennon and the location for filming of horror classic, Rosemary’s Baby.  But when it was completed in 1882, it was so far north from the rest of the city, that people said that it might as well be in the Dakota Territory – which is where it got its name.

The photograph below was taken looking south from the Dakota in 1890.  As you can see, its neighbors were mostly shacks and adobe huts.  No building of comparable height can be seen.

Upper West Side
On 18 January 1876, the 9th Avenue El opened its 61st Street station, and the Upper West Side finally had some means of modern public transportation.  But not until 1891 was it extended up to the Dakota at 72nd Street and beyond to 116th.  Notice the use of carriages and horse-drawn omnibuses along Central Park West, however.  Traffic was fairly busy.  Now, let’s take a look across the park, to Fifth Avenue.

5th Avenue
Consider that at this time, Fifth Avenue right across the Park was already earning the name of Millionaire’s Row.  Carnegie, Frick, Mellon, Vanderbilt, Kahn, Rockefeller, Phipps, Astor – all of them maintained enormous mansions like the ones seen below (the Astor house is in the foreground) while just across the park, people lived in ramshackle housing.

Of course, the great irony is that because these single-family mansions lined 5th Avenue up until the 1930′s and even later in some cases, Central Park West was developed for apartment buildings much earlier.  The pre-war apartment buildings such as the San Remo, the Beresford, the Langham and others, were built in a style much grander than those which would replace these mansions on 5th. Ultimately, the East Side would end up looking much poorer than the West Side because it was developed that much later.

Experience the hidden history in our Central Park tour.  We offer a unique NY tour experience, told with audio narration, hundreds of pictures, video clips, gps-enabled map, trivia quizzes, local recommendations, and much more.  Walk New York with Racontrs and take a walk through history.