| 1902 |
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Mayence Bent opens the Stanley Hotel when Nairobi was just a railway outpost of a few wooden and tin buildings
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| 1905 |
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The Great Fire burned down the hotel.
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| 1913 |
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Mayence Bent and her husband Fred Tate bought two corner sites and created a three storey, sixty roomed hotel called The New Stanley.
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| 1914 - 1918 |
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During the First World War, the hotel was the base for Allied Troops repelling German forces that managed to penetrate Kenya's southern borders.
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| 1922 |
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The hotel was a big supporter of local farmers and December 1922, took delivery of the first ever order undertaken by the fledgling Kenya Breweries, now the largest brewer in the country.
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| 1928 |
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The New Stanley was the venue for a glittering ball for their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Gloucester. There were week long public celebrations in Nairobi.
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| 1930 |
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The fame and custom of The New Stanley grow and an article in in The East African and Rhodesian newspaper said;
"There is probably no other colony in the British Empire where a hotel has been more intimately associated with communal development and welfare than has The Stanley of Nairobi with the modern history and progress of Kenya. That celebrated establishment has been so long a popular rendezvous of the colonists that it has acquired an individuality entirely of its own".
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| 1939 - 1945 |
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The hotel provided a welcome refuge to Allied troops based in Nairobi, fighting the Italians in Abyssinia (Ethiopia).
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| 1947 |
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The New Stanley was the home base for the making of the United Artists' classic production of The Macomber Affair, based on the Ernest Hemingway story, The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber. The whole intriguing scenario had been dreamt up by Hemingway during his convalescence in the hotel in the early days of l934.
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| 1952 |
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The Stanley was the venue for a lunchtime banquet in honour of Princess Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip who were in Kenya as part of a world tour. They availed bedroom suites at The Stanley for a change of clothes on way to Sagana Lodge - Kenya's wedding gift to them. As they were making their departure from the hotel, Mrs Margaret Stephens noticed that either Princess Elizabeth or Prince Philip had left their hat on the bed, which some superstitious folks regarded as a sinister omen of bad luck, while others believe it to be a good omen, predicting that sooner or later they will return. Mrs Stephens rushed down the stairs with the hat, but was too late - the royal couple had already left. Superstition or not, history would reveal that while the prince and princess were game watching at Treetops, on the night of February 5th l952 King George VI died in his sleep in London and by the morning of February 6th news was already being flashed around the world that Princess Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne and would become her country's queen. For all at The Stanley, it would be the poignant memory of the forgotten hat and the subsequent death of a much-loved king.
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| 1959 |
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Massive reconstruction that took the hotel up to eight floors making it the largest hotel in East Africa and the best-appointed hotel in the continent. On a clear day, Mount Kenya could be seen one hundred miles (l6O km) away, snow-clad year in, year out, astride the equator while in the other direction Mount Kilimanjaro was also visible on the Kenya-Tanzanian border.
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| 1978 |
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The Sarova Group purchased this historic hotel from the Block family and continued to run it as The New Stanley until 1999 when a major upgrade was undertaken and the hotel reverted to its original name - The Stanley. |
