Where Is Apartment 7A in 'Rosemary's Baby'?

Front cover of the 1967 edition of 'Rosemary's Baby' (left) and one of its inspirations, The Dakota building in New York City (right via stonyrun)

Hollywood and devilry have long shared an unholy matrimony, consummated in 1968 with "Rosemary's Baby," the hit movie that gave birth to an entire genre of hell spawn horror. The Ira Levin-penned tale paved the way for satanic classics such as "The Omen," breathing fire and brimstone into the silver screen for what seemed like an eternity. 

In 2024, Paramount+ resurrected the iconic IP with a prequel titled "Apartment 7A," a play on the coven's residence in the fictional New York building called The Bramford. 

While The Bramford doesn't exist in real life, the equally eerie Dakota building does. It was the landmark building at 1 West 72nd Street in NYC where Mia Farrow wandered, in all her Vidal Sassoon pixie-cut glory, while filming the Roman Polanski-directed adaptation. It was also here where the Julia Garner-starring prequel filmed establishing shots and background plates, although the bulk of production took place in London. The 2014 made-for-TV remake with Zoe Saldaña relocated the story entirely from New York to Paris, with La Chimere standing in for The Bramford. 

Levin's Faustian vision for his enfant terrible has always been American. In 1960, during a lecture, he was struck by a terrifying thought: What if a woman were carrying an unnatural fetus? 

In the years leading to that, Levin was renting a subdivided apartment carved from a townhouse in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Separated from the neighbors only by a sealed staircase, Levin was eventually forced out of the apartment when the townhouse changed hands—with Eleanor Roosevelt herself.

Hell had no wrath, as it were, like Levin, who channeled the diabolical slight into his work. The stage was set for what Levin called the "antithesis for the Christ myth." With its German Renaissance Revival architecture, The Dakota provided a devilishly handsome setting for the "un-virgin birth" of the "Christ parallel." Additionally, Levin drew design inspiration from the ornate Alwyn Court on 57th Street.

"Could it work with a 'Dakota-esque' house in which the young couple had a small neatly subdivided apartment?" Levin wrote in his notes for the novel. 

"Rosemary's Baby" originally bore the title "All Is Calm, All Is Bright," a bastardization of nativity imagery. Levin had his anti-Christ story all planned down to the manger floor layout. He placed the Woodhouses in Apartment 7E, adjoining the Castevets in Apartment 7A. 

Levin was particular about naming the place; this was considered a Gothic novel, after all, in which the setting plays an important, almost-anthropomorphic role. A nod to horror legend Bram Stoker, the name was so important to him that he went out of his way to correct Time Magazine for misspelling the place in its book review. (It's Bramford, not Branford.)

Before "Rosemary's Baby" was conceived, urban legends in early 20th-century America told of a "devil baby" born in Chicago and dropped off at Hull House. If this is information you want to absorb with a steaming hot cup of tannis root tea, wait until you hear about The Dakota's bloodstained history. In December 1980, John Lennon, "Rosemary's Baby's" contemporary in 1960s pop culture, was gunned down outside its doors. Before his death, Lennon reported strange occurrences in the building. Some say that his spirit, along with that of former residents like Judy Holliday, haunt the place still.

But June, not December, holds a special place among the coven. As readers would know, it’s the one time of the year to wish everyone a “Merry anti-Christmas!”