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If you spot a bright red mailbox inside your favorite café or boutique this week, don’t start hunting for stamps. Those boxes aren’t for bills or holiday cards; they’re collecting something far better: anonymous love letters to New York City.
For the second year in a row, floral design studio POPUPFLORIST is bringing back its citywide Love Letter Gallery, a Valentine’s-season project that invites New Yorkers to put pen to paper and say exactly how they feel about a person, a place, a memory or the city itself. Beginning next Monday, on January 19, red mailboxes will pop up at more than a dozen local businesses, including Big Night, The Elk, Tarin Thomas and Bon Bon, turning everyday errands into low-key romantic gestures.
The idea is simple: Write a handwritten love letter, drop it in one of the mailboxes and walk away knowing no one will ever trace it back to you.
From there, the POPUPFLORIST team, led by founder Kelsie Hayes, will select 30 standout notes to serve as the heart of a one-day exhibition, where each message is paired with a custom floral installation inspired by its words. This year’s Love Letter Gallery will open to the public on February 7, with free registration for a full day of wandering, reading and quietly falling in love with strangers’ handwriting at HOST on Howard.
The gallery itself builds on the simple idea that love stories don’t have to be polished, posted or public to matter. The exhibition has become an annual snapshot of the city’s emotional temperature, whether that’s romantic, nostalgic, funny, awkward or even sometimes heartbreaking, all filtered through ink and paper.
In a city where so many feelings live inside text bubbles, the Love Letter Gallery is a reminder that slowing down long enough to write something by hand still hits different. And for anyone who’s ever wanted to tell New York exactly how they feel, without leaving a name, this is your moment.