Bruce Roderick

“In 1883, when finishing touches were being applied to the Dakota, the Brooklyn Bridge opened to great civic fanfare, after thirteen years in the building.”
― Stephen Birmingham, Life at the Dakota: New York's Most Unusual Address

“Another friend commented, with some sarcasm, that, in putting up a building so far north and so far west of civilization, Mr. Clark might just as well be building in Dakota, which was then still a territory and not yet a pair of states.”
― Stephen Birmingham, Life at the Dakota: New York's Most Unusual Address

“Herman Melville, by then well into his seventies, often walked with his little granddaughter in Central Park. He had been living quietly in New York for years, convinced that his literary career was over, working as a customs inspector on the Hudson River piers. The Schirmers “discovered” the almost-forgotten author of Moby Dick, and gave a dinner for Melville and his wife. The Schirmers apparently found Melville charming but a little sad. He was working again on a final novel, to be called Billy Budd. But, he said, he was sure his book would never be published unless he had it privately printed, because his popularity of more than thirty years earlier had all but vanished.”
― Stephen Birmingham, Life at the Dakota: New York's Most Unusual Address

“the University being an asylum, a refuge from the world, for the dispossessed, the crippled.”
― John Williams, Stoner