The Dakota- Gustave Schirmer

"The early tenants included the piano manufacturer Theodor Steinway and his friend the music publisher Gustave Schirmer, who liked to fill his salon with such brilliant guests as Mark twain, William Dean Howells, Herman Melville and Peter Ilyich Tchaikowsky, who came to town in 1891 to conduct the opening night concert at Carnegie Hall, (A charming and extremely unreliable anecdote has the bewildered Tchaikowsky mistaking the Dakota for his host's private home - and Central Park for its garden - and grumbling afterward, 'No wonder we composers are so poor!"

Upper West Side Story, a History and Guide (Abeville Press 1989), Peter Salwen