Lenox Hotel

61 Exeter Street 

Back Bay neighborhood

Boston, Massachusetts 

(the Lenox is located about 132 steps from the official Boston Marathon finish line)

At 11 stories high, this hotel stood as the tallest building in Boston when it was built in 1889 by hotelier Lucius Boomer at a cost of $1.1 million.  It opened in the fall of 1900 and was Boston's first "boutique" hotel located at the historic epicenter of Copley Square. The Boston Post prior to the name Boston Herald called it "the Waldorf-Astoria of Boston", a reference to its owner who also owned the famous Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. 

 The Lenox was named after the family of Lady Sarah Lennox, a courtier of King George III, to honor an anniversary of peace between England and North America.

It was designed by architect Arthur H. Bowditch in the Beaux-Arts style, featuring red and white terra-cotta bricks. Some of the rooms still have functioning wood-burning fireplaces and the hotel is one of few known buildings in the world with a functioning Cutler Mail Chute. 

The Cutler Mail Chute (1848-1927) is an architectural invention patented in 1883 by Rochester architect James Goold Cutler, allowing occupants of multi-story skyscrapers, hotels and office buildings to drop mail into a vertical glass-and-metal shaft from any floor straight down to a central lobby collection box.  The first operational system was installed in 1884 at the Elwood Building in Rochester, New York.  Tenants slid letters into a slot on their respective floor and gravity carried the mail down the internal glass-fronted chute to a locked metal receiving box in the ground-floor lobby for postal collection. 

On September 11, 1883 Cutler received U.S. patent 284,951 for the mail chute.

Empire State Building mail chutes

circa 2007

Legendary singer, Judy Garland called the hotel her home away from home and famously stayed for over three months in 1965. The hotel dedicated Room 423 as the Judy Garland Suite in her honor.  Red Auerbach, the legendary Boston Celtics coach and executive lived in Suite 900 during the basketball season.  Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal stayed at the hotel while filming the classic movie Love Story. And Baseball legend, Babe Ruth was known to frequent The Lenox.  

Lobby Legends

Jimmy Fisher

The hotel is famous for its deep loyalty to long-running staff such as bellman Jimmy Fisher, who greeted guests curbside for 60 years.  He began his career February 21, 1949. At the time, the hotel was only 49 years old.  When The Lenox celebrated their 125th anniversary, Jimmy was there through nearly all of it.  

On May 8, 2009 the Lenox Hotel honored its longest running employee.  The Lenox dedicated their bell closet, Jimmy's office for 60 years. 

The "Jimmy Fisher Suite" was unveiled as a tribute to the then 84-year-old bellman who was as much a fixture and as recognizable as the Lenox's iconic, red rooftop sign. 

Jimmy Fisher, after 60 years as a Lenox bellman, greeted each day and each guest with a sparkle in his eye and a spring to his step. The Saunders family has operated the hotel for over 50 years and Jimmy's hospitality and enthusiasm through our ownership is memorable to travelers from around the world. Always a class act, he is a Lenox legend."

At Your Service

Jimmy literally witnessed a slice of Beantown history pass through The Lenox's doors. The Lenox proudly bestowed the highest honor to Mr. Fisher for his loyal service to the Lenox and to the community, at large.  

The sign was erected during the early 1900s boom of "sky-signs" or "scaffold signs".  It has served as a fixture of the city's skyline for over a century.  While it retains its classic vintage aesthetic, the structure has been modernized over the years.  The original illumination setup has been retrofitted with energy-efficient red LED bulbs. The glowing red letters are heavily associated with the historic charm of Copley Square and are frequently photographed from the hotel's private rooftop deck. This unique space provides sweeping views of downtown Boston and the Prudential Tower, making it one of the city's most exclusive and sought-after backdrops.

The Lenox at Christmas

..this iconic red, glowing neon landmark has towered over the city skyline 

since the early 1900s..

The Lenox lobby at Christmas

Sweeney's on Boylston is a lively, contemporary-traditional Irish pub located inside The Lenox Hotel in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood. In 1966, owner Roger Saunders shipped an exact replica of a British pub piece-by-piece from Liverpool to install inside the hotel.