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 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.

The Wolcott had declined into a single room occupancy hotel by 1975, when the Erlich family bought it and made numerous renovations.

[12] A marquee with a skylight and recessed lights is cantilevered over the main entrance, above which is an oversized cartouche and an ornate keystone.

Over the years, a metal sign with the hotel's name, security cameras, and an air-conditioner have been added to the ground floor.

On this story, the windows are recessed between pairs of large brackets that support a protruding copper cornice with giant dentils.

[7] From the outset, the Wolcott was intended as a fireproof building; the hotel's steel frame was built using what was known as the "Roebling system".

[16] The ballroom was decorated in a white, gray, and gold color scheme, with red plush hangings, and was illuminated by full-height windows on its rear wall.

[16] The decorations included Baroque-style moldings, a mosaic-tile floor, a dozen Palladian windows, a set of columns with scagliola-style plaster capitals, and a coffered ceiling.

[18] The closets in each bedroom have large hooks for women's dresses, which, at the time of the hotel's construction, tended to be heavy.

[24][26] The presence of commercial structures and entertainment on Fifth Avenue and Broadway also affected development on side streets, where hotels and clubs were built to replace private residences.

[24] The Alvord family sold three land lots on 31st Street in February 1902 to New York Realty Corporation, which then resold them to William C.

[27][28] Prior to Dewey's purchase, the Alvord family had owned the site for a half-century, and the lots had included a three-story house and a horse stable.

[29][30] The George F. Balmer Construction Company began excavating the site in June 1902,[31] and A. L. Goldschmidt was hired that September to install the electrical equipment.

[32] James Breslin, the longtime operator of the nearby Gilsey House hotel, leased the building in March 1903,[33][34] paying more than $2 million over 21 years.

The hotel had its own restaurant, which, according to a contemporary brochure, served "little chicken that come unplucked from the Jersey farms" and Cape Cod oysters.

[9] In addition, the hotel hired porters to carry bags from nearby train stations, as well as a valet and a "ladies' maid".

[22][48] The writer Francis Trevelyan Miller also stayed at the Wolcott, suing the hotel's managers in 1930 after he allegedly got electrocuted while trying to plug in a lamp.

[51] The Commission Resident Buyers' Association of America opened a clubhouse on the Wolcott's mezzanine in 1928, using the main ballroom and the private dining rooms for meetings.

At the time, the ballroom was mostly empty and used as storage space, although it sometimes held photo shoots for celebrities such as actresses Jennifer Lawrence and Amanda Seyfried.

[22] Under a contract with nonprofit organization Exodus Transitional Communities, in March 2020, the hotel became a shelter for homeless former prisoners during the COVID-19 pandemic.

[71] A writer for The New York Times wrote in 1980 that the Wolcott's design "show[s] the romantic extravagance once lavished on city hostelries".

[72] Another critic for the same paper wrote in 2000: "Walking into the giddy, ornate plaster-and-marble ornamented lobby [...] I fooled myself for an instant, thinking that I'd returned to the elegant New York of 1910.

"[73] In 2014, Lana Bortolot of The Wall Street Journal wrote of the Wolcott that "Its distinctive pink-brick facade, limestone frills and copper mansard roof gave it standing among other luxury hotels of its time".

[22] Christopher Gray wrote that Duncan's design "combines his blocky, brusque stonework with a veritable galleon of copper cresting along the three-story-high mansard".

[74] Similarly, The Daily Telegraph called the Wolcott a "faded hotel with a shabby-grand lobby and cramped rooms".