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Yoko Ono has long been known as an artist and an activist — and now the 93-year-old is on the cusp of adding another title to her name: the Grande Dame of the Dakota.
Indeed, Ono will become the Dakota’s longest current homeowner when an apartment at the building’s tippy top completes its sale, The Post has learned. She moved into the storied Upper West Side property — the first luxury apartment building in America — with her late husband John Lennon 53 years ago.
That penthouse, which asked $8 million for sale and is now under contract, was owned by the late art patron Steven Rubin, who bought at the Dakota in the late 1960s and added more space in subsequent years, according to statements by his daughter. The final price to be paid for that perch, as well as its new owner, are not yet known.
With Rubin’s wife, Polly, passing last December, the property listed in June and went into contract this month — a testament to right pricing, deft marketing and the Dakota’s strong cache.
The Rubins’ penthouse began as Gilded Age quarters for maids who worked for the matrons below. Rubin subsequently bought the area above the initial apartment and connected the two spaces with a staircase. Views allowed him and his wife to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from the coveted comfort of their home, according to the listing from Sotheby’s International Realty’s Roberta Golubock.
While city tax records and transfers show other residents of the Dakota, at 1 W. 72nd St., handing down their apartments to family members, no continuous ownership by the same person in the 94-unit building is apparent except for Ono.
Her half-century-plus ownership of the seventh-floor sanctuary demonstrates not only staying power, but determination while traversing very devastating, and sweet, times there.
Ono and Lennon moved into the Dakota soon after the Beatles disbanded and the pair created their own oasis by adding an adjacent apartment. The main room was all white, including its Grand Steinway piano where Lennon composed.
Ono and Lennon offset that stark minimalism with other rooms outfitted with heavy, dark wood Asian artifacts, old tapestries and antique instruments from all over the world. Expanses with 14-foot ceilings looked down on custom hand-carved marble fireplaces.
While the amount Lennon and Ono paid for their original apartment in 1973 has not been pinned down, building records show comparable homes in the Dakota selling for between $150,000 and $200,000 at that time. That’s roughly $1.1 million to $1.5 million in today’s dollars.
Individual units like the one the couple initially bought were generally between 2,500 and 3,000 square feet at the time, city Department of Buildings renderings show.
Ono and Lennon bought at least three other units over the years on different floors for guests, and to use for offices and storage.
What’s more, Lennon wrote some of his most textured songs while at the Dakota, including “Mind Games,” “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” and virtually all of his final album, “Double Fantasy.”
The couple raised their son Sean there — and their apartment was where Annie Leibowitz shot the famous 1980 photo of Lennon and Yoko nude and curled up, with his arms wrapped around her head while kissing her cheek. Just 5 hours later, Lennon was dead in the Dakota’s archway from the bullet of an unhinged fan, Mark David Chapman, at the age of 40. (Lennon’s “Strawberry Fields” memorial stands just steps away from the building in Central Park.)
While no board memos or policy changes have surfaced after the murder, the Dakota’s board does appear to have hardened towards celebrities in the aftermath. In following years Madonna, Cher and Billy Joel were all left on the outside looking in when they tried to get the very stringent board’s approval to move in, reports say.
The board was more celebrity-friendly in earlier years, giving its nod to Judy Garland, Lauren Bacall and Boris Karloff.
Lennon said he hoped to set the stage for the couple’s board interview by wearing a suit to the meeting and sending Ono back to their apartment to change from the miniskirt she planned to wear.
Ono, now, 93, has downsized her footprint at the Dakota over the years by offloading some of the auxiliary spaces. She now spends considerable time at her farm upstate and has given no indication she plans to sell her primary Dakota residence. Real estate platforms and other property portals peg the apartment’s value at around $20 million.
Ono declined a request for comment. Overall, she’s still a true New Yorker.
“New York is like an old friend. It has its moods. But I know them all,” The New York Times reported her saying.
