Lower Manhattan: South Street Seaport & the Financial District
At one time, this was New York -- period. Originally established by the Dutch in 1625 (hence the city's original name, Nieuw Amsterdam), New York's first settlements sprung up here on the southern tip of Manhattan Island. Everything uptown was farm country and wilderness. While all that's changed, this is still the best place in the city to search for the past.

Lower Manhattan consists of everything south of Chambers Street. Battery Park, the point of departure for the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Staten Island, is on the very south tip of the island. The The South Street Seaport, now touristy, but still a reminder of times when shipping was the lifeblood of the city, lies a bit northward on the eastern coast. It's just south of the Brooklyn Bridge, which stands proudly as the ultimate engineering achievement of New York's 19th-century Industrial Age.

The rest of the area is considered the Financial District, but may be more famous now as Ground Zero. Until September 11, 2001, the Financial District was anchored by the World Trade Center, with the World Financial Center complex and residential Battery Park City to the west, and Wall Street running cross-town a little south and to the east. Now, a gaping hole remains where the Twin Towers and its five sister buildings stood.

Ground Zero has now been cleared and the PATH station has reopened; it's better than ever. Designs for what will eventually be constructed on the site have finally been approved, but it will be years before those designs are fully realized.

Wall Street, the South Street Seaport, and Battery Park are all open and ready for business. City Hall remains the northern border of the district, abutting Chambers Street (look for City Hall Park on the map). Most of the streets of this neighborhood are narrow concrete canyons, with Broadway serving as the main uptown-downtown artery.

Just about all of the major subway lines congregate here before they either end up in or head to Brooklyn. See "Getting Around," later in this section, for information on where to gather the latest subway information.

TriBeCa
Bordered by the Hudson River to the west, the area north of Chambers Street, west of Broadway, and south of Canal Street is called the Triangle Below Canal Street, or TriBeCa. Since the 1980s, as SoHo became saturated with chic, the spillover has been quietly transforming TriBeCa into one of the city's hippest residential neighborhoods, where celebrities and families quietly co-exist in former cast-iron warehouses that were converted into spacious, expensive loft apartments. Artists' lofts and galleries as well as hip antique and design shops pepper the area, as do some of the city's best restaurants. Standing in the north shadow of the World Trade Center, TriBeCa suffered greatly in the wake of the disaster; however, it has recovered beautifully.

Robert DeNiro gave the neighborhood a tremendous boost when he established the TriBeCa Film Center, and Miramax headquarters gave the area further capitalist-chic cachet. Still, historic streets like White (especially the Federal-style building at no. 2) and Harrison (the complete stretch west from Greenwich St.) evoke a bygone, more human-scaled New York, as do a few holdout businesses and old-world pubs. The main uptown-downtown drag is West Broadway (2 blocks to the west of Broadway). Consider the Franklin Street subway station on the 1or 9 lines to be your gateway to the heart of the action.

Chinatown
New York City's most famous ethnic enclave is bursting past its traditional boundaries and has seriously encroached on Little Italy. It originally consisted of former marshlands northeast of City Hall and below Canal Street, from Broadway to the Bowery. This booming neighborhood now offers tasty, cheap eats in cuisines from Szechuan to Hunan to Cantonese to Vietnamese to Thai. Exotic shops offer strange foods, herbs, and souvenirs; bargains on clothing and leather are plentiful. It's a blast to walk down Canal Street, peer into the myriad electronics and luggage stores and watch crabs cut loose from their handlers at the exotic fish markets.

The Canal Street station (J, M, Z, N, R, 6, Q and W lines) will get you to the heart of the action. The streets are crowded during the day and empty out after around 9 PM. They remain quite safe, but the neighborhood is more enjoyable during the bustle.

Little Italy
Little Italy, traditionally the area east of Broadway between Houston and north of Canal streets, is a shrinking community today, due to the encroachment of thriving Chinatown. It's now limited mainly to Mulberry Street, where you'll find most of the restaurants, and just a few offshoots from Mulberry. With rents going up in the increasingly trendy Lower East Side, a few chic spots are moving in, further intruding upon the old-world landscape. The best way to reach Little Italy is to walk east to Mulberry Street from the Spring Street Station on the no. 6 line, then turn south for Little Italy. You can't miss seeing the red, green, and white street decorations all year-round.

The Lower East Side
The Lower East Side boasts the best of both old and new New York. Witness the stretch of Houston between Forsyth and Allen streets, where Yoneh Shimmel's hundred year-old knish shop sits shoulder-to-shoulder with the city's newest art-house cinema. Some say that the Lower East Side has come full circle: Hipster 20-somethings with Ivy League educations and well-honed senses of entitlement have been drawn back to the same neighborhood their immigrant grandparents worked their fingers to the bone to escape.

Of all the successive waves of immigrants and refugees who passed through this densely populated tenement neighborhood from the mid-19th century to the 1920s, Eastern Europeans left the most lasting impression here. These communities, which first popped up between Houston and Canal streets, east of the Bowery, had been supplanted by drugs and crime, dragging the Lower East Side into the gutter -- until now, that is. The neighborhood has experienced quite a renaissance over the last few years, and makes a fascinating itinerary stop for both nostalgic tourists and nightlife hounds. Still, the blocks well south of Houston can be grungy in spots, so walk them with care after dark.

There are some remnants of the original Lower East Side along Orchard Street, where you'll find great bargain hunting in its many old-world fabric and clothing stores, still thriving between the club-clothes boutiques and trendy lounges. The exponentially expanding trendy set can be found in the blocks between Allen and Clinton streets, south of Houston and north of Delancey, with more new shops, bars, and restaurants popping up on the blocks to the east every day.

Visiting the Lower East Side--The Lower East Side Business Improvement District operates a neighborhood visitor center at 261 Broome St., between Orchard and Allen Streets (tel. 866/224-0206 or 212/226-9010), that's open daily from 10 AM to 4 PM - sometimes later. Stop in for an Orchard Street Bargain District Shopping Guide (which can also be mailed to you in advance, if desired), plus other information on this historic, yet freshly hip 'hood. You can also find shopping, dining, and nightlife directories online at www.lowereastsideny.com.

This area is not well served by the subway system (one cause for its years of decline), so your best bet is to take the F train to Second Avenue and walk east on Houston; when you see Katz's Deli, you'll know you've arrived. You can also reach the neighborhood from the Delancey Street station on the F line, and the Essex Street station on the J, M, and Z lines.

SoHo & Nolita
No relation to the London neighborhood of the same name, SoHo got its moniker as an abbreviation of "South of Houston Street." This super-fashionable neighborhood extends down to Canal Street, between Sixth Avenue to the west and Lafayette Street (1 block east of Broadway) to the east. It's easily accessible by subway: Take the N or R to the Prince Street station; the C, E, or 6 to Spring Street; or the F or V train to the Broadway-Lafayette stop (note that the B, D, and Q trains are not currently serving Broadway-Lafayette due to construction on the Manhattan Bridge).

An industrial zone during the 19th century, SoHo retains the impressive cast-iron architecture of the era, and in many places, cobblestone peeks out from beneath the street's asphalt. In the early 1960s, cutting-edge artists began occupying the drab and deteriorating buildings, soon turning it into the trendiest neighborhood in the city. SoHo is now a prime example of urban gentrification and a major New York attraction, thanks to its impeccably restored buildings, fashionable restaurants, and stylish boutiques. On weekends, the cobbled streets and narrow sidewalks are packed with shoppers, with the prime action between Broadway and Sullivan Street, north of Grand Street.

Some critics claim that SoHo is becoming a victim of its own popularity -- witness the recent departure of art galleries and independent boutiques that fled to TriBeCa and Chelsea as well as the influx of suburban mall-style stores such as J. Crew, Victoria's Secret, and Smith & Hawken. However, SoHo is still one of the best shopping neighborhoods in the city, and few are more fun to browse. High-end street peddlers set up along the boutique-lined sidewalks, hawking silver jewelry, coffee-table books, and their own art. At night, the neighborhood is transformed into a terrific, albeit pricey, dining and barhopping region.

In recent years, SoHo has been crawling its way east, taking over Mott and Mulberry streets -- and white-hot Elizabeth Street in particular -- north of Kenmare Street, an area now known as Nolita for its North of Little Italy location. Nolita is becoming increasingly well known for its hot shopping prospects, which include a number of pricey antiques and home design stores. Taking the #6 to Spring Street will get you closest by subway, but it's also just a short walk east from SoHo proper.

The East Village & NoHo
The East Village, which extends between 14th Street and Houston Street, from Broadway, east to First Avenue and beyond, to Alphabet City -- Avenues A, B, C, and D -- is where the city's real bohemia has gone. Once, flower children acid-tripped along St. Marks Place and listened to music at the Fillmore East; now the East Village is a fascinating mix of affordable ethnic and trendy restaurants, upstart clothing designers, kitschy boutiques, punk-rock clubs (yep, still), and folk cafes. A half-dozen Off-Broadway theaters also call this place home.

The gentrification that has swept the city has made a huge impact on the East Village, but there's still a seedy element that some of you won't find appealing -- and some of you will. Now yuppies and other ladder-climbing types make their homes alongside old-world immigrants who have lived in the neighborhood forever, and the cross-dressers and squatters who settled here in between. The neighborhood still embraces great ethnic diversity, and more recent immigrants have established many Indian restaurants on 6th Street between First and Second Avenues.

The East Village isn't very accessible by subway; unless you're traveling along 14th Street (the L line will drop you off at Third and First Aves.); your best bet is to take the 4, 5, 6, N, Q, R, or W to 14th Street/Union Square; the N or R to 8th Street; or the #6 to Astor Place and walk east.

Until 1998 or so, Alphabet City resisted gentrification and remained a haven of drug dealers and other unsavory types -- no more. Bolstered by a major real estate boom, this way-east area of the East Village has blossomed. French bistros and smart shops have popped up on every corner. Nevertheless, the neighborhood can be deserted late at night, since it's generally the province of locals. It's far from the subway lines, so know where you're going if you venture out here.

The southwestern section of the East Village, around Broadway and Lafayette, between Bleecker and 4th streets, is called NoHo (for North of Houston), and has a completely different character. As you might have guessed from its name, this area has developed much more like its neighbor to the south, SoHo. Here you'll find a crop of trendy lounges, stylish restaurants, cutting-edge designers, and upscale antiques shops. NoHo is fun to browse; the Bleecker Street stop on the #6 line will land you in the heart of it, and the Broadway-Lafayette stop on the F or V line will drop you at its southern edge.

Greenwich Village
Tree-lined streets crisscross and wind, following ancient streams and cow paths. Each block reveals yet another row of Greek Revival town houses, a well-preserved Federal-style house, or a peaceful courtyard or square. This is "the Village," from Broadway west to the Hudson River, bordered by Houston Street to the south and 14th Street to the north. It defies Manhattan's orderly grid system with streets that predate it, virtually every one chock-a-block with activity. Unless you live here, it may be impossible to master the lay of the land -- so be sure to take a map along as you explore. The Seventh Avenue line (#1, 2, 3 and 9) is the area's main subway artery, while the West 4th Street stop (where the A, C, and E lines meet the F and V lines) serves as its central hub.

Nineteenth-century artists such as Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, and Winslow Homer first gave the Village its reputation for embracing the unconventional. Groundbreaking artists such as Edward Hopper and Jackson Pollack were drawn in, as were writers such as Eugene O'Neill, Edward Estlin Cummings, and Dylan Thomas. Radical thinkers from John Reed to Upton Sinclair basked in the neighborhood's liberal ethos, and beatniks Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs dug the free-swinging atmosphere. Now the Village is the roost of choice for the young celebrity set, with the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Matthew Broderick, and Sarah Jessica Parker drawn by its historic, low-rise, laid-back charms. Gentrification and escalating real-estate values conspire to push out the artistic element, but culture and counterculture still rub shoulders in cafes, internationally renowned jazz clubs, neighborhood bars, Off-Broadway theaters, and an endless variety of tiny shops and restaurants.

The Village is probably the most chameleon-like of Manhattan's neighborhoods. Some of the highest-priced real estate in the city runs along lower Fifth Avenue, which dead-ends at Washington Square Park. Serpentine Bleecker Street stretches through most of the neighborhood and is emblematic of the area's historical bent. An alternate culture scene flourishes around Christopher Street and Sheridan Square. The streets west of Seventh Avenue, an area known as the West Village, boast a more relaxed vibe and some of the city's most charming and historic brownstones. Three colleges -- New York University, Parsons School of Design, and the New School for Social Research -- keep the area thinking young.

Streets are often crowded with weekend warriors and teenagers, especially on Bleecker, West 4th, 8th, and surrounding streets, and have been known to become increasingly sketchy west of Seventh Avenue in the very late hours, especially on weekends. Keep an eye on your wallet when navigating the weekend throngs. Washington Square Park was cleaned up a couple of years back, but it's still best to stay out of the area after dark.