The El Dorado
300 Central Park West | Upper West Side | built 1930
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1901
Neville & Bagge design the first Eldorado, a pair of eight-story flats on this lot
An earlier building on this lot, the original Eldorado, was a pair of eight-story apartment structures designed in 1901 by Neville & Bagge, which the Landmarks Commission, quoting an earlier account, says ranked for a generation or more among Central Park West's finest houses. When the present tower was planned in 1929, the assembled site also took in five row houses facing West 90th Street, plus three tenements and a row house on West 91st Street.
- 1931
Margon & Holder's Art Deco El Dorado replaces an earlier apartment house
Developer Louis Klosk demolished the original El Dorado apartment building in 1929 and hired Margon & Holder, with Emery Roth as consultant, to design a replacement. The new twin-towered Art Deco building rose 30 stories and held 200 apartments. It was completed in 1931.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1931
The Depression forces the El Dorado into foreclosure
The stock market crashed shortly after ground was broken, and the Great Depression slowed construction. In November 1931, the unfinished El Dorado was lost at foreclosure to the Central Park Plaza Corporation.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1933
A car crashes into the El Dorado's marquee, killing a passenger
Early on the morning of October 6, 1933, a speeding car hit a hole that workers had dug in the road at 90th Street. It flipped onto the sidewalk and wrecked the El Dorado's marquee, killing one of its two passengers.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1940
Zionist leader Nahum Goldmann moves into the El Dorado
Zionist activist Nahum Goldmann, newly arrived in America from Geneva, moved into the El Dorado in September 1940. While living there he worked for the creation of Israel, and he later co-founded the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which negotiated reparations for Jewish victims of the Nazis.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1953
Bishop 'Daddy' Grace of the United House of Prayer buys the El Dorado
In May 1953 Bishop Charles M. 'Daddy' Grace, who headed the United House of Prayer for All People, a Black church, bought the building. The Amsterdam News observed that every resident was white, as they had been when Grace stunned the real estate world with news of his purchase. He said he meant to run it purely as an investment, though staff salaries made it costly. After his death in January 1960 the building was sold to Alexander Gross.
“That May, the Central Park Plaza Corporation sold the El Dorado to Charles M. "Daddy" Grace, the Bishop of the United House of Prayer for All People…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1971
Israeli diplomat Yosef Tekoah hosts Abba Eban and UN envoy Gunnar Jarring for a private lunch
On March 18, 1971, Yosef Tekoah, Israel's delegate to the United Nations and an El Dorado resident, gave a lunch in his apartment for Foreign Minister Abba Eban and Gunnar Jarring, the special representative named by U Thant for the Middle East peace effort. The lunch gave the two men a chance to talk privately. A New York Times photographer caught them looking out the apartment window.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1982
The El Dorado becomes a cooperative, and a window fight leads tenants to seek landmark status
The El Dorado was converted to a housing cooperative in July 1982, and nine directors were named to run it. Over the next two years they spent part of a $2.28 million reserve fund on new mechanical equipment, automated elevators and a restored lobby. A board plan to replace the leaking original casement windows alarmed some tenants, who asked the Landmarks Preservation Commission to protect the building.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1985
The city designates the El Dorado a landmark
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the El Dorado an individual New York City landmark on July 9, 1985. The building had been listed as part of the Central Park West Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2005
Moby buys a four-floor apartment in the south tower for $4.5 million
The musician Moby, born Richard Melville Hall in 1965, bought a four-floor, two-bedroom apartment in the El Dorado's south tower in 2005 for $4.5 million. AllMusic ranks him with the leading dance-music figures of the early 1990s. His purchase added to a list of artists, actors and entertainers who have lived in the building.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 2020
Art dealer Hester Diamond dies after more than 50 years in her El Dorado apartment
Hester Diamond died in January 2020 at 91, after more than fifty years in the building. She and her husband Harold, both art dealers, had merged their duplex, which spanned the 18th and 19th floors of the south tower, with an adjoining unit; in 2009 she added another on the 18th floor, for 6,300 square feet. The Times said her collections included pieces by Picasso, Leger and Bernini. The art was auctioned and the apartment listed in 2022 for $19.5 million.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- The El DoradoWikipedia
- The 1931 El Dorado - 300 Central Park WestDaytonian in Manhattan
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