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The Sharp TV was sleek and new, but the tiles in the bathroom longed for a good scrubbing. The door unlocked using a modern card instead of a key, but the push-button phone - the typewritten number on its beige face disconnected - was of unknown vintage, perhaps from the 1980's. There were hints of the hotel's rich past, sometimes in the oddest places.
Room 1105 revealed a moldy patch on the bathroom ceiling.
A "Church Directory," about 25 years old, remains posted in the lobby in a glass case, amid a row of pay phones ("Manhattan Church of Christ, James R. Petty, minister"). A sign around the corner reads "Dixie Bar & Restaurant," but the door below it is closed.
The hotel was called the Hotel Dixie when it opened in 1930, the same year as the Chrysler Building. It had entrances on 42nd Street and 43rd Street, and the Central Union Bus Terminal occupied the basement. In 1937, the hotel raised its price for a single room, to $2.75 from $2.50. It was later purchased by a subsidiary of the Carter Hotels Operating Corporation but kept the Dixie name. A 225-seat theater opened there in 1966 with the musical comedy "Autumn's Here."
In the early 1980's, the city housed homeless families at the Carter. These days, Ms. Nguyen said, the hotel is undergoing renovations and service improvements - including the addition of a front desk computer system - that are likely to lead to rate increases.
There are certainly other budget hotel rooms in the city that are smaller, shabbier and do not come with their own private bathrooms. The price of Room 1105 - $232 for two nights for one occupant, after taxes - made it among the cheapest of the city's 71,000 hotel rooms. The bed was firm but comfortable, and the room muffled the noise of the city, the only sounds an occasional siren and the drip-drip-drip of one of the bathtub's leaky handles.
Such distractions do not sit well with some. Anders Lindqvist, 33, a lawyer from Copenhagen, said on Thursday that he would probably not return to the hotel after his weeklong visit. "I was surprised that there was still plumbing and installations that bad in the center of Manhattan," he said.
Other Carter guests have a way of looking on the bright side.
"As long as there's a bed and a roof and running water, that's all I really need," said Kee-Hyun Kim, 23, a musician from Boston who checked out on Wednesday and said he liked the hotel's price and central location. "I'm pretty low maintenance, and I think anybody who stays at a place like that has to be."
