"There's a Small Hotel" is a song by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Lorenz Hart. It was written for Billy Rose's Jumbo (1935) but dropped from that show. It was then used in the musical On Your Toes (1936), where Ray Bolger and Doris Carson introduced it. Jack Whiting and Vera Zorina repeated it in the London West End production, which opened on 5 February 1937 at the Palace Theatre. Hart's biographer Gary Marmorstein reports that Hart visited the Stockton Inn in Stockton, New Jersey, with bandleader Paul Whiteman and noted the wishing well outside. A rival claimant is the Montecito Inn in Santa Barbara County, California.
Hal Kemp and His Orchestra recorded the song for Brunswick in 1936, and Jack Whiting recorded it for Columbia in 1937. Josephine Baker also sang a French version, "C'est un nid charmant", in 1937. Claude Thornhill's 1942 recording used an arrangement by Gil Evans. Later recordings include versions by Stan Getz (1950), Chet Baker (1956), Ella Fitzgerald for Verve (1956), Sammy Davis Jr. and Carmen McRae (1957), and Frank Sinatra for Capitol (1957). Betty Garrett sang it in the 1948 film Words and Music, and it was interpolated into the 1957 film Pal Joey. Rebecca Lenkiewicz's 2025 play Small Hotel is based on the song.
