West 73rd–74th Street Historic District

The West 73rd and 74th Street Historic District serves as a primary example of how one wealthy family shaped the architecture of the Upper West Side. Edward Clark, heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune, owned large swaths of this land in the late nineteenth century. He commissioned architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh to design a long, harmonious row of houses on 73rd Street, intentionally creating a visual link to the nearby Dakota apartment building, which Clark also developed. At the time, skeptics famously mocked the Dakota as Clark's Folly because they believed the location was too far north and too isolated from the city's fashionable center to ever succeed.