Hotel Wolcott

The Hotel Wolcott is a hotel at 4 West 31st Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, in the Midtown South neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Constructed between 1902 and 1904 by developer William C. Dewey, it was designed by John H. Duncan in the French Beaux-Arts and neoclassical styles. The hotel's namesake was Henry Roger Wolcott, a businessman, politician, and philanthropist. The hotel is a New York City designated landmark.

The hotel building is 12 stories tall. Its facade is largely made of red brick and limestone, with elaborate decorations. The facade is divided vertically into six bays and horizontally into a two-story base, a six-story midsection, a transitional story, and a three-story mansard roof. The hotel originally contained several ground-floor amenity areas for guests, including a neo-Grec lobby, reception room, and ballroom. The upper floors are arranged in an "H" shape and originally contained various suites and rooms, which have been rearranged over the years into 160 guestrooms.

Dewey acquired the site in 1902. The hotel opened on March 1, 1904, several months behind schedule, and Dewey had lost the Wolcott to foreclosure by that September. The Wolcott was operated by numerous individuals during the early 20th century, including William and Julius Manger of Manger Hotels during the 1920s. Over the years, it was popular with travelers, though the Wolcott also had permanent residents such as Isadora Duncan, James Buchanan Duke, Doris Duke, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, and Henry Miller. The Wolcott had declined into a single room occupancy hotel by 1975, when the Erlich family bought it and made numerous renovations. The Wolcott was known as a budget hotel in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, then served as a temporary shelter in the 2020s.