The Lowell – New York's last fireside address since 1927

On a tree-lined residential street between Madison and Park Avenues, The Lowell has stood since 1927 as one of the few hotels in Manhattan still owned by the family that built its reputation, not a hospitality group. The 17-storey tower was raised as a luxury apartment hotel in the last years of the Jazz Age and, a century on, keeps the proportions and hush of a private house: just 74 rooms and suites, a marble foyer, and a residential block of Upper East Side townhouses for neighbours rather than other hotels. The MICHELIN Guide recognises it with Two MICHELIN Keys, a nod to the kind of restraint that doesn't need a lobby full of people to prove itself. What guests remember is specific rather than generic: a working wood-burning fireplace crackling in a suite above 63rd Street, a French oak bar pouring a very good martini, and an afternoon tea now plated on Dior porcelain. It is the sort of hotel that counts down, quietly, to its own hundredth birthday in 2027.

01The house

The Lowell opened its doors in 1927, a landmark seventeen-storey hotel built in the Art Deco idiom of the period, and it remains, as the trade press notes, one of the only hotels built in that era that is still operating as a hotel today rather than having been converted into apartments or demolished. The building sits on East 63rd Street, 150 feet from Madison Avenue and 550 feet from Fifth Avenue, in a block of pre-war townhouses rather than hotel towers.

What makes it unusual among New York's grand old addresses is who owns it: The Lowell is still family-run, among the few remaining family owned hotels in the city, which the management credits for its highly personalised service rather than the standards of a branded chain. The most recent restoration, a three-year, twenty-five-million-dollar project completed in 2017, was overseen by Los Angeles interior designer Michael S. Smith, known for his work on the Obama White House, together with London architect Mark Pinney, who kept sentimental details such as the lobby's grisaille wallpaper intact while reworking the rooms around them.

02Rooms and suites

Suites outnumber rooms by design: the house counts 47 individually appointed suites and 27 deluxe rooms, each styled with the coveted luxuries of a private New York apartment, from original wood-burning fireplaces and gourmet kitchens to terraces with views over Manhattan rooftops. The Lowell markets itself as the only hotel in New York City with genuine wood-burning fireplaces, a detail limited to certain categories, with a concierge on hand to light applewood fires scented with lavender or rosemary for guests who book the Fireside package.

Insider tip

Book early for a fireplace suite; the Lily of the Valley tea at Majorelle needs a reservation.

Not every room has a terrace or a soaking tub, so the hotel advises booking directly with its reservations team for either feature. At the top of the house sits a three-bedroom, 2,900-square-foot penthouse suite, available to rent for 300,000 dollars a month, complete with its own outdoor space above the Upper East Side rooftops.

03Where to eat

Majorelle, the hotel's restaurant, takes its name and its colour scheme from the French painter Jacques Majorelle and the Majorelle Blue of his Marrakech villa garden; the dining room itself borrows from Yves Saint Laurent's gardens there, with orchids, orange trees and a vaulted, marble-columned room opening onto a trellised courtyard with up-lit fountains. Executive chef David Thual, who trained in Brittany before working under Christian Constant at the Michelin-starred Le Violon d'Ingres in Paris and later ran Ladurée's American kitchens, cooks a French menu with Mediterranean and Moroccan inflections, built around tableside classics such as grilled Dover sole and Poulet Grand'Mère, with soufflés and seasonal pastry from executive pastry chef Matthew Lambie.

Upstairs, on the hotel's second floor, The Pembroke Room keeps to a quieter register, serving breakfast and weekend brunch in a room guests describe as intimate and old New York in feel. Majorelle has, meanwhile, taken on the hotel's best-known ritual: the Lily of the Valley Afternoon Tea, created with Dior Maison and named for the lily of the valley, one of Christian Dior's favourite flowers, served on the house's curated table settings and, this autumn, Dior's Limoges porcelain with new seasonal pastries.

04The bar

Jacques Bar, named for the same Jacques Majorelle, is lined in French oak with booth banquettes and a bar menu that runs all day, built for a quiet martini away from the street. Further back, The Club Room is reserved exclusively for hotel guests, a coffered-ceiling lounge with its own fireplace that functions as the house's unofficial living room, the kind of space a longtime resident of the building might retreat to rather than a public bar.

05Spa and wellbeing

The Lowell has no spa of its own; instead it has struck a partnership with Dior Spa New York, housed within the House of Dior at the corner of Madison Avenue and 57th Street, the only Dior Spa in the city and a seven-minute walk from the hotel. The treatments, both facial and body, are built around the same made-to-measure principle as Dior's couture, customised to each guest rather than drawn from a fixed menu, and bookable through the concierge for hotel guests or directly by outside visitors; as of October 2026 the spa opens Monday to Saturday from 10am to 7pm and Sunday from 11am to 6pm. Back at the hotel, a newly renovated fitness centre with cardio and strength equipment is reserved for in-house guests only.

06The neighbourhood

The address places guests on one of the Upper East Side's quietest blocks, between Madison and Park Avenues, a five-minute walk from Central Park and its zoo, and close enough to Madison Avenue's fashion houses and the Museum Mile to treat them as an extension of the hotel's own corridors. The Lowell's Golden Keys Concierge team, multilingual and well-connected, arranges the kind of access that doesn't appear on a rate card: a private after-hours tour of the Frick, entry to a sold-out show, or a look at a designer's private collection.

07Making the most of a stay

Book a suite with a working fireplace if the season allows it, and ask for the Fireside package, which pairs an in-room fire lit by a dedicated Fireplace Butler with Champagne. The hotel is pet-friendly, so a four-legged travelling companion needn't complicate plans, and families are welcomed into connecting suites with kitchenettes rather than steered toward a separate wing. With the hotel's centennial falling in 2027, this is also a good moment to watch for anniversary events before the crowds catch on.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.