[7] The terminal occupied the entire ground floor of the hotel,[8][9][10] although its loading platform and waiting room were 5 feet (1.5 m) below street level.

Bus drivers pulled forward into the slip, allowing passengers to alight and board at the widest part of the loading platform.

[17] The hotel's first story contained the Dixie Lounge Bar, a nightclub that opened in 1942 and was decorated in the Southern Colonial style.

[18] The room was surrounded by a four-foot-high brick wainscoting, and the front wall contained white window shutters and ivy-filled planting boxes.

[22] A circular bar, 50 feet (50 ft) in circumference, adjoined the theater and was behind glass doors; it was closed during performances, except for during a twenty-minute intermission.

[4][5] In May 1929, the New York State Title and Mortgage Company gave Percy and his brother Harold a $2.2 million construction loan for the Hotel Dixie.

[26][27] This land lot was separated from the hotel's site by another building at 264 West 43rd Street,[a] which belonged to the Schulte family.

[29] The Uris brothers leased the storefronts to various businesses, including a laundry,[30] as well as a beauty parlor and barber shop.

[15] The Hotel Dixie opened the next month, with S. Gregory Taylor as the operator and James M. Tait as the general manager.

[37]In October 1931, the Bowery Savings Bank moved to foreclose on the hotel's mortgage, for which the Jerrold Holding Corporation owed $1.98 million.

The project was to include refurbishing the lobby, installing a marquee, adding dance floors, and renovating half of the rooms.

[66] An off-Broadway venue, the Bert Wheeler Theater, opened at the hotel in October 1966 with the musical comedy Autumn's Here.

[69] Vietnamese businessman and former ship owner Tran Dinh Truong purchased the hotel in October 1977[70] for $1.5 million.

Upon acquiring the Carter, Tran closed the hotel's 42nd Street entrance and hired Walter Scheff as its general manager.

[72][67] The hotel's theater continued to operate through the 1980s, presenting such shows as an adaptation of Aesop's Fables in 1979[73] and the musical Ka-Boom!

[74] Although the Urban Development Corporation (UDC), an agency of the New York state government, had proposed redeveloping the area around a portion of West 42nd Street in 1981,[75][76] the Carter Hotel was excluded from the project.

[77] The Carter was used as a welfare hotel during the 1980s, housing homeless families;[78] the Times reported in 1984 that the area around the entrance was filled "with teen-agers and young children who play sidewalk games into the night".

[81] The Carter housed 190 families by December 1983, when it was cited for its "consistently low rate of compliance in correcting health and safety violations".

[82] The hotel's physical condition was so bad that the New York City government stopped referring homeless people there in 1984, and an official for the 42nd Street Redevelopment Corporation called it "Nightmare Alley".

[71] By the end of 1985, the number of homeless families in the Carter had declined from 300 to 61, and the hotel began to make an effort to attract tourists once again.

[83] New York City removed all homeless families from the Carter in 1988 due to difficulties with plumbing, electricity, security, and vermin.

[88] The New York City Department of Buildings issued a building-code violation against the hotel in January 1998 after inspectors discovered bulging masonry on the facade.

[93] Among the complaints were that the hotel's main entrance, public restrooms, registration desk, and guestrooms were all inaccessible to disabled guests.

Tran's lawyer claimed that some rooms were already ADA-accessible and that a wheelchair lift at the main entrance had been temporarily removed to allow a carpet to be installed.

[101] GF Management made gradual modifications to make it more desirable for guests, starting with rectifying fifteen violations of city building codes.

[110][111] JPMorgan Chase's loan replaced in August 2022 with $185 million in construction financing, provided by Mack Real Estate.

[116][117] In 1980, a writer for Newsday wrote that the hotel was a "large, un-self-conscious, family-oriented kind of place" with "simple and spotlessly clean" rooms.

In 2005, The New York Times wrote that the hotel "offers travelers a cheap room in an expensive city, and something more: an adventure".

[91] New York magazine wrote in 2014: "If you still want a touch of the vice-ridden Times Square of the '60s and '70s, consider spending a night at the Hotel Carter.

[124] In August 2007, a housekeeper found the body of aspiring model Kristine Yitref,[125][126] wrapped in plastic garbage bags and hidden under a bed in room 608; sex offender Clarence Dean was charged with her homicide.