The Lowell

East 63rd Street between Madison and Park Avenues is a block of townhouses and plane trees, and the only sign of a hotel is a striped awning and a doorman. The Lowell, New York City, has kept that discretion since 1927, when it opened as an apartment hotel for residents who wanted the service of a hotel in the shape of a home.

History

The building was designed by the architect Henry Churchill and opened in 1927 in the Art Deco manner, with a glazed terracotta entrance by the ceramic artist Bertram Hartman that survives on the street. Its early tenants were long-stay residents, and for most of the twentieth century the hotel was as much an apartment house as a hotel. In 1984 the Chartouni family bought it, and Dina De Luca Chartouni has run it since, keeping it independent while the hotels around it changed hands between chains. A renovation completed in 2017 reworked the lobby, the public rooms and many of the suites, with the decorator Michael S. Smith, who had redesigned the Obama White House's private quarters, in charge of the lobby and restaurant.

Architecture and design

The exterior is brick and terracotta over 17 storeys, narrow and set among townhouses. Inside, the rooms are furnished like Upper East Side apartments: French and English antiques, chinoiserie, books, fabrics and lamps chosen room by room rather than to a template. Most suites have full kitchens, a legacy of the residential years, and many have terraces. Thirty-three of the 74 rooms have wood-burning fireplaces, which the staff lay and light in winter, a feature almost no other Manhattan hotel has kept.

Rooms and suites

The Lowell has 74 rooms and suites, of which 47 are suites, from one-bedroom suites with fireplaces to the two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments on the upper floors with terraces towards the park. Long-stay guests still take suites by the month. Pets are welcome.

Dining

Majorelle opened in February 2017 on the ground floor, the project of Charles Masson, who had run La Grenouille, his family's French restaurant on East 52nd Street, for decades. Named for the Marrakech garden of the painter Jacques Majorelle, it has a dining room of flowers and mirrors, a bar, and a conservatory-style garden room at the back. The menu is French with Mediterranean touches. The Pembroke Room, on the second floor, serves breakfast and an afternoon tea that has been an Upper East Side fixture for decades. The Club Room on the ground floor is the residents' lounge, with a bar in the evening.

Wellness

A fitness room is available to guests, and the hotel arranges in-room massages. There is no spa or pool; Central Park, one block west, is the exercise ground.

Weddings and events

The Lowell hosts small weddings, dinners and receptions in Majorelle's garden room and in the Pembroke Room, and takes private parties in the larger suites. Its scale keeps everything intimate: there is no ballroom, and the hotel suits wedding breakfasts and family dinners rather than large receptions. Small board meetings use the Pembroke Room by day.

Location

The hotel stands at 28 East 63rd Street, one block from Central Park and from the boutiques of Madison Avenue, and two blocks from the Lexington Avenue/63rd Street station on the F and Q lines. LaGuardia is about 30 minutes by car, JFK about an hour. Among luxury hotels on the Upper East Side, it is the smallest of the established houses and the one that most resembles a private apartment building.