The Dakota Apartments on 72d Street triggered a gradual improvement of the lower park blocks. Waves of high class residential development radiated from the Dakota's lordly towers after the building opened in 1884.

Slowly, lavish townhouses, patrician apartments and grand houses of worship rose in the Dakota's shadow.(building on the right)

And so, gentrification in and around the park blocks ultimately displaced some of the warehouses near Central Park in the 60s (although many remained, like the "Liberty Warehouse" on 64th Street, with its rooftop replica of the Statue of Liberty).

The last trace of the old Somerindyck estate finally vanished in 1903, when the "Sunken Village" – a remnant of the shantytown days at Broadway and 61st Street – was plowed under to make way for an apartment house.

Columbus Circle is the place to be! As the city moved up through the vacant land below 59th Street, Columbus Circle and Broadway in the 60s grew into an amazingly chic entertainment, although never a rival of the Great White Way downtown.

Reisenweber's Cafe was a tremendously popular spot on the Circle. Offering a "Delicious Frog Dinner" on weekend evenings for $1.25, followed by dancing to the Vienna Court Theater Orchestra.

Reisenweber's also turned New Yorkers' ears sideways with the first jazz ever performed in the northeast.

By 1905 the Cafe was joined by the opulent Majestic Playhouse on Broadway and 60th Street, where Victor Herbert held forth with orchestral concerts on Sunday nights. Vaudeville, live playhouses and early movie theaters moved into the increasingly lively streets.

Not all of these were as respectable as the Majestic, though. Audiences at the Colonial on 62d Street (above), for example, thrilled to a "Concert" that included the Rossow midgets. Another featured act was Abdul Kader And His Three Wives. The Circle Theatre, on 60th Street followed suit with the "New City Sports," featuring six female wrestlers. These were joined a few years later by Blarney's Lincoln Square Theater, self-proclaimed to be "New York's Most Classy Vaudeville Theater," on Broadway and 66th Street.