West 73rd Street, looking northwest from the roof of the Dakota, 1884

Hardenbergh’s upper-middle-class townhouses along the north side of 73rd Street unified the block through the German Renaissance style of the Dakota, employing a harmonious variety of pitched roofs, dormer windows, and contrasting colors. Clark terminated the west end of the block with an apartment house that could accommodate five families.

The 73rd Street row became a model for later West Side builders, who copied its ornamented style, high stoops, and multicolored combinations of brick and stone. Over the next 15 years, the West Side developed as a residential district, and the area seen in this photograph filled up with townhouses. As The New York Times commented in 1886, “The west side of the city presents just now a scene of building activity such as was never before witnessed in that section, and which gives promise of the speedy disappearance of all the shanties in the neighborhood and the rapid population of this long neglected part of New-York. … The huge masses of rock which formerly met the eye, usually crowned by a rickety shanty and a browsing goat, are being blasted out of existence.” AR