Plains, Ga. ? Jimmy Carter has been giving people a reason to come to this small south Georgia farming community for nearly 30 years. Now he’s giving them a place to stay.

In the tiny downtown where Carter centered his successful 1976 campaign for the presidency, the rooms at the Plains Historic Inn offer a trip through the past, 10 years at a time. The seven rooms each represent a decade of Carter’s life, from the 1920s through the 1980s.

Carter oversaw construction of the inn and a 25-booth antiques mall below it. Former first lady Rosalynn Carter picked out the antiques and furnishings to match the decades and stayed astonishingly true to each era.

“We think that staying here overnight is like a history lesson,” said President Carter, who stopped by the inn for an interview after giving his weekly Sunday school lesson — an event that draws hundreds of tourists to his church.

“Rosalynn undertook an enormous task of getting furniture that was absolutely authentic, so far as we can tell, representing those separate decades,” Carter said.

The inn is owned by the city. The building was purchased from the estate of Carter’s cousin and renovated under a community improvement program. During town-meeting discussions of the projects one of the residents suggested the theme for the project, which cost about $1.1 million.

Guests meeting in the common areas or swaying in a rocking chair on the second floor balcony cheerfully talk about their rooms.

“A lot of them will tell people what their room looks like and say ‘Why not come in and take a look at my room?'” said inn manager Sandra Walters. “They find it fascinating. You don’t usually find that in a motel or a hotel.”

True to their decade

The Hometown of President Jimmy Carter has restored the Plains Historic Inn in honor of the former president. Each of the inn's seven rooms represents a decade of Carter's life, from the 1920s to the 1980s. Carter is shown during an October 2002 news conference outside the Plains, Ga., inn.

Each room has polished hardwood floors, exposed brick walls, high ceilings and sitting areas. After that, the decor ranges widely, from fringed lampshades in the 1920 room to a leather sofa in the 1960 room to whirlpool baths in the 1970 and 1980 rooms. Each room has art and magazines from its decade. Even the phones, most of them with rotary dials, represent the rooms’ eras.

There are modern conveniences — each of the rooms has a remote-control air conditioner-heater and bathrooms are equipped with hair dryers. But the inn takes care to blend them into the rooms representing older decades.

The most popular room is the 1980, mostly because it’s large and airy, has a pullout coach and a large television, Walters said. The president said his favorite was the 1920.

“I just like the rooms with the old bathroom fixtures,” he said. “Ordinarily, if you build a motel with a hundred rooms you buy a hundred bathtubs all just the same, a hundred commodes just exactly the same, a hundred sinks all the same, a hundred tables, a hundred beds. All these are different.”

Indeed, in the 1920 room, the toilet has a water box perched several feet above the bowl with a pull-chain dangling beneath it. The freestanding tub is a huge claw-foot model placed nearly in the middle of the bathroom. Because the tub is set high, bathers have to practically climb into it. The shower head is about 8 inches wide, casting a wide berth of spray to make up for the lack of pressure.

“I think they’re beautiful, the way that the bathroom fixtures were designed in the ’20s and ’30s and ’40s. This was before they had tubs that went all the way down to the floor,” Carter said.

A living attraction

Guest conversations, of course, tend to be about Carter. They marvel that someone from a town so small — its population has grown to 716 from 653 during Carter’s campaign — could become president. They talk about the sites throughout Plains, including Carter’s boyhood home and the school he and Rosalynn attended. And most hope to get a glimpse of him.

Carter, who spends about a third of his time and most weekends in Plains, said he did not mind being a living tourist attraction.

Carter sits in the presidential suite at the Plains Historic Inn. All the inn's rooms have furniture and fixtures that match their designated decade.

“Usually when I come down into Plains, I come down on my bicycle and I ride freely,” he said. “If there’s people waiting on the street, I always have photographs with them, shake hands with them, sign autographs.”

The Sunday school lesson Carter gives when he’s in town is a huge draw.

One recent Sunday people from at least 16 states and visitors from England attended the lesson at Maranatha Baptist Church. The church holds about 330 people. When that space fills — and it usually does — a closed-circuit television is set up in a back room that holds about 150 others.

The president and first lady patiently pose for pictures with guests after the church service that follows the lesson. That was the main reason Beth Everett and her family drove six hours from Tuscumbia, Ala.

“I teach seventh-grade civics and just thought that it would be impressive to my students to have my picture made with the president,” Everett said.