Struth! World's smallest hotel rooms in NYC Skid Row

Smallest hotel rooms toe the line

IN his continuing search for the more weird and wondrous in this world, David Ellis says you would think that a hotel with the world's smallest rooms, and in the heart of its city's once-Skid Row, would need to do some pretty fancy footwork to promote itself.

But not The Bowery House Hostel in New York City's now-famous The Bowery, that from the 1940s to '90s was home to that city's Skid Row, it's Bowery Bums, notorious street gangs and flophouses.

Because today's The Bowery House concedes that its 110 historic and "compact" rooms have just enough space to shuffle 'tween beds and walls and that some of those beds have even had to be cut-down to under six feet (around 175cm) to fit in. They are even called 'cabins'.

And that while stowing your luggage can be a juggling act, and toilets and showers are shared down the corridor, there's a great rooftop terrace with city views, and there's free Wi-Fi.

NOW that's a small hotel room: One of New York's tiniest
Bowery House Hostel rooms - but location and price
are a magnet for the budget-conscious. (BoweryHouseHostel)

Thus budget-conscious travellers flock to this circa-1920s hotel whose rooms were sub-divided into multiple temporary digs in the 1940s for troops returning from WWII and are still only just big enough today for a single or double bed and side table.

But no longer is the surrounding Bowery district Skid Row, instead its now all trendy shops, bars, cafés and galleries, and just a short stroll to the Lower East Side, Little Italy, SoHo and Chinatown. And with plenty of other major attractions only minutes away by subway.

Prices start from just AU$102 for The Bowery House's most minuscule single-bed rooms. See  www.theboweryhouse.com