The Willcox

The Willcox hotel is a hotel established in Aiken, South Carolina in 1900 by Englishman Frederick Willcox, his Swedish wife Elise Wellborn, and their two sons, Frederick and Albert.

History

Frederick came to Aiken in the late 1890. He had been a "courier" in Europe (a term then used for someone who planned and conducted worldwide tours).

The family built a house on the northwest corner of Chesterfield Street and Colleton Avenue and established a catering company in their home. Elise soon became renowned for her preparation of fine foods and the business was heavily patronized by Aiken “Winter Colony” families, fabulously wealthy founders and heirs to the fortunes made during the American Industrial Revolution.

At about this same time, in 1898, the first Highland Park Hotel burned. It had been a notable structure that housed many winter colonists who had not yet built a “cottage” in Aiken. (A mansion in any other sense, Winter Colony “cottages” were the second or third homes of families who had great estates on Long Island, Park Avenue in Manhattan and other wealthy enclaves in the Eastern United States.