# For Its 100th Birthday, The Lowell Is Asking Guests to Tell Its Story 2026-11-09 · United States · Reported Feature The Upper East Side hotel is planning a year of centennial reflection in 2027, with an unusual invitation at its center: help preserve the memories that never made it into the official history. The Upper East Side hotel is planning a year of centennial reflection in 2027, with an unusual invitation at its center: help preserve the memories that never made it into the official history. --- A hotel can preserve the photographs of its lobby, the drawings from its renovations and the dates of its major milestones. Capturing what happened between arrivals and departures is harder. Those memories belong to guests, and many of them leave the building packed away in a suitcase, a family album or a story told years later. For its 100th anniversary in 2027, The Lowell is inviting those memories back. The privately owned luxury hotel at 28 East 63rd Street has confirmed a yearlong centennial commemoration and is asking past and present guests to contribute anecdotes, photographs, videos and personal stories that could become part of the anniversary's public record. The material may inform displays, printed pieces, social-media features or special readings, giving guests a role in deciding which moments are remembered. The concept is a notably personal one for a property whose reputation rests on privacy and discretion. Rather than looking only to architecture or celebrated visitors to explain a century of hospitality, The Lowell is making room for the experiences of people who actually stayed there. A Century on East 63rd Street The Lowell opened in 1927, tucked between Park and Madison Avenues in a residential stretch of Manhattan's Upper East Side. The 17-story property has 74 guest rooms and suites, a size that has helped define its identity within a city better known for monumental hotels and high-volume arrivals. Central Park and the shops of Madison Avenue are nearby, but the hotel occupies a quieter side street. Its present-day character draws heavily on the idea of a private New York residence. Some accommodations have wood-burning fireplaces, kitchen facilities or terraces. There is the Pembroke Room for breakfast and weekend brunch, Majorelle for dining, Jacques Bar and a Club Room reserved for hotel guests. These are part of the hotel's regular hospitality offering, not announced centennial events, but they help explain the atmosphere the anniversary seeks to document. The hotel's official history emphasizes the creative people who have found refuge behind its doors, saying that novels have been written, plays conceived and scripts studied there. The MICHELIN Guide has also linked The Lowell to writer Dorothy Parker. Yet the hotel is not treating famous names as the complete story. Its appeal for recollections makes the more ordinary, deeply personal record of a visit part of the celebration as well. What Is Confirmed for the 2027 Centennial The central announcement is straightforward: the hotel plans moments of reflection and celebration throughout 2027, and it has opened a call for memories from guests past and present. The submission invitation asks for personal stories, anecdotes, photographs and videos. The Lowell says those materials could be featured in visual displays, print, social media and special readings over the course of the year. Its submission terms also allow consideration for written, digital, film or print projects. Those are potential formats for anniversary storytelling, not a published schedule of exhibitions or ticketed programs. As of October 27, 2026, the hotel's official centennial page does not name specific 2027 event dates, a public opening celebration, a submission deadline, performers, a book-release date or admission arrangements for any proposed displays or readings. Travelers should not interpret the yearlong commemoration as a confirmed daily program. The distinction is important because a hotel anniversary can take many shapes: private gatherings, guest-facing experiences, historical installations and widely accessible public events. The Lowell has confirmed the centennial framework and the memory-collection effort, while leaving the precise calendar to be announced. A Hotel That Has Already Been Rewriting Itself The centennial does not arrive after a century frozen in place. A 2017 relaunch announcement described a redesign that reshaped the hotel's public areas, including its restaurant, bar, lobby and Pembroke Room, with interior designer Michael S. Smith and architect Mark Pinney involved in the project. That work expanded the settings in which guests could gather without abandoning the property's residential identity. As Galerie reported in May 2026, seven rooms and suites were renovated with Smith, co-owner Dina De Luca Chartouni and in-house designer Julio E. Jiménez, introduced updated finishes and technology while retaining familiar elements such as fireplaces, bookshelves and traditional writing desks. The design story is less about remaking The Lowell into something unrecognizable than about keeping a century-old address usable and relevant. That creates an interesting contrast for the anniversary. Rooms can be redesigned, restaurant concepts can change and furniture can be restored. The impressions left on the people who occupied those spaces are much harder to recover once they are gone. The centennial collection is an effort to preserve a different kind of inheritance. The Stories a Guest Book Cannot Hold An anniversary archive built from guests' recollections can contain details that institutional timelines overlook. A family might have saved a photograph from its first visit to New York. A returning traveler might remember how a particular room looked decades earlier. Someone else might be able to describe a moment of kindness, a conversation or a tradition that never appeared in any brochure. These are examples of the kinds of memories such an invitation could uncover, not accounts the hotel has already published. They matter because hotels preserve a version of a city's social history. People arrive for work, reunions, milestones, performances, unexpected detours and private reasons that may never become public knowledge. The stories attached to a single address, collected across generations, can reveal how a neighborhood and its visitors changed even when the building's exterior remained familiar. The Lowell's request also carries a meaningful choice. An institution known for protecting its guests' privacy is asking them to share selectively. Participation is voluntary, and the hotel says submitted material may be reviewed for centennial-related written, digital, film and print projects. Selected stories may be published with attribution. Anyone sending family images or personal recollections should read the permissions statement on the official centennial page before contributing. How to Follow the Anniversary The Lowell's centennial is scheduled for 2027, with commemorative activity described as taking place throughout the year. Its confirmed public-facing invitation is the collection of memories from past and present guests. The hotel has not yet posted individual dates for displays, readings or other anniversary activities, and it has not announced a deadline for submissions. Details and the designated submission email are available through the hotel's official Centennial Celebration page. The property is at 28 East 63rd Street, between Madison and Park Avenues, in New York City. Visitors interested in the anniversary should consult that page for newly announced programming rather than assuming ordinary restaurant or hotel reservations include a centennial event. In a city that continually rebuilds and reinvents itself, a hundred-year-old hotel is an uncommon witness. The Lowell's anniversary will, inevitably, celebrate the building that survived. Its most interesting contribution may be the record of people who passed through it: not just the names that history already remembers, but the moments that otherwise would have disappeared with the closing of a door. Official centennial announcements and memory submissions: The Lowell Hotel — Centennial Celebration 2027 --- ProbleMattic is written and maintained by Matthew Kulcsar, a software engineer, project manager, technologist, platform builder, emergency-services-trained helper, grandfather, and lifelong collector of broken systems, odd behaviors, and useful nonsense.