BEER Ch. 3 The Deseret

[Dave Monroe]

Thanks!

On 10/21/13, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:
> As your Wikipedia link for the Dakota (72nd St and Central Park West)
> notes,
> rather than being named for its [then] northwestern remoteness from other
> fashionable apartment buildings, it probably got the name because its
> builder liked the sound of it. That said, Pynchon's choice of Deseret --
> the
> Latter-Day-Saints' name for the territory they wanted to carve out of the
> Mexican cession as of 1848 -- seems very likely to be a nod to the popular
> story about the Dakota's name, and adds just a pynch of Mormon woo.
>
> As a rider of the Broadway-7th Ave. lRT to my school on 77th St., I used
> the
> 79th St. stop just outside the Apthorp twice a day for six years. I
> remember
> only one classmate who lived there, and visited his family's apartment a
> few
> times. The Wikipedia description as "Italian Renaissance Revival... [with]
> a
> three-story rusticated base" is right on; six years later, living in
> Florence, I thought often that some of its imposing palazzi on narrow
> streets had almost exactly the same spatial presence as the larger Apthorp
> looming over its wider streets.
>
>
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l