Pakistan International Airlines, which is owned by the Pakistani government, and Prince Faisal bin Khalid of Saudi Arabia are putting the 1,013-room hotel on the auction block in the hope of raising about $225 million.

It is not the best time to sell a hotel, even one wrapped in limestone and antique French marble. Foreign tourists are scarce and room rates are down. But the 20-story hotel is being looked at by developers and hotel companies that see the rare opportunity to buy an entire block in the city's premier office district.

Some real estate executives said the Roosevelt, which sits on a one-acre parcel bounded by Madison and Vanderbilt Avenues, between 45th and 46th Streets, could even be demolished in the future to make way for a new skyscraper.

"You don't get much more prime real estate than this site," said John Fox, a senior vice president at PKF Consulting, a hotel consulting company. "The public areas are some of the nicest in New York, although the guest rooms are a little small. The question is: Is it worth more as something else?"

According to real estate executives, several hotel companies as well as developers like Donald J. Trump, Harry Macklowe, Sheldon Solow and Alan B. Friedberg are circling the hotel, which has a gilded ceiling in the lobby, marble floors and a brass pendant clock.

"I think the world's going to bid on it," said one developer, who added that he would be one of the bidders. "You could keep it as a hotel for a while and then do office development, but I think it works as a hotel."

The Roosevelt was to go on sale earlier this year, said Lawrence B. Wolfe, a managing director of Eastdil, the real estate investment bank representing Prince Faisal and Pakistan Airlines, but the process was delayed until after the war in Iraq.

The partners have decided to sell the Roosevelt, as well as the Hotel Scribe in Paris, to raise cash for the airline and to continue a government privatization effort in Pakistan.

The Roosevelt opened in 1924 as part of Terminal City, a complex of hotels and office buildings near Grand Central that were linked to the terminal by underground passageways. One of the first hotels to offer a health club, child care and a dog kennel, the Roosevelt was included in scenes from movies over the years, like "The French Connection," "Wall Street," "Malcolm X" and "Maid in Manhattan."

Like the railroad that built it, the hotel had fallen on hard times by the 1970's. The Loews Corporation paid $55 million to buy the Roosevelt in 1979 from the bankrupt Penn Central Railroad, along with two other railroad hotels, the Barclay (now the Intercontinental Hotel) and the Biltmore. Loews quickly resold the Roosevelt to Paul Milstein, a developer, for less than $30 million. (Mr. Milstein also bought the Biltmore, demolished it and built the Bank of America Tower.)

Nine months later, Mr. Milstein leased the hotel to a joint venture of the Pakistani airline and Prince Faisal for $2.7 million to $4 million a year in rent.

The airline and its partner, however, had more than $70 million in operating losses over the next 16 years, Aslam R. Khan, managing director of Pakistan Airlines Investments, said in an interview in 2000. The hotel took on a dowdy cast, with threadbare carpets and tarnished brass fixtures.

In 1996, the airline brought in a new management company and spent $58 million on renovation, and the hotel started to turn a profit. According to sales documents, the Roosevelt had a net operating income of $12.7 million last year and a 74 percent occupancy rate, down from $29 million in income in 2000 and an 84.8 percent occupancy rate.

The airline and the Saudi prince bought the hotel after becoming embroiled in a legal battle in 1999 with the Milstein family over the 20-year-old option to buy for $36.5 million. The Milsteins thought the property was worth about $250 million, but the State Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of the airline. - NYT

SAT Reporter Adds from New York:

Financial analysts are finding it difficult to explain why Pakistan wanted to sell a business in the heart of the largest city in the world which was giving them more than a million dollars a month, net after all the operating expenses.

These experts say special lobbies within PIA and the Finance and Defence Ministries of Pakistan had always wanted to make a kill in shape of hefty kickbacks by selling off a piece of property which could easily pay itself off in a few years, even though profits had come down from $29 million in 2000 to $12.7 million in 2002 because of 9/11.

"How many businesses in Pakistan are making a million dollar a month in net profits," an expert asked in New York. "Even PIA itself cannot claim to be making such regular and guaranteed money. Roosevelt has been and can always be a very solid financial backbone of PIA itself," the expert said.

Besides its financial aspect, owning a prime property in the heart of Manhattan has its own political and other advantages as well. Roosevelt employes thousands of workers in New York and Pakistani Government leaders always have a secure place to stay, whenever they are in New York. Selling the hotel would deprive Pakistan of many advantages.