Starting at Houston (pronounced how-ston) Street, walk south down Broadway, stopping to browse the stores and vendor stands between Houston and Prince streets. The sole remaining museum on the block is the New Museum of Contemporary Art, devoted exclusively to living artists. Within the Prada store at 575 Broadway, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas has created a high-tech setting for the Italian house of fashion. Several art galleries share these blocks as well, most notably at 568 Broadway, which houses 10 galleries, and the trendy Armani Exchange store on the ground level.

Just south of Prince Street, 560 Broadway on the east side of the block is another popular exhibit space, home to a dozen or so galleries. Across the street at No. 561, Ernest Flagg's 1904 Little Singer Building shows the final flower of the cast-iron style, with wrought-iron balconies, terra-cotta panels, and broad expanses of windows.

One block south of the Little Singer Building, between Spring and Broome streets, a cluster of lofts that were originally part of the 1897 New Era Building share an art nouveau copper mansard at No. 495. At the northeast corner of Broadway and Broome Street is the Haughwout Building, a restored classic of the cast-iron genre.

At the southeast corner of Broadway and Broome Street, the former Mechanics and Traders Bank (486 Broadway) is a Romanesque and Moorish revival building with half-round brick arches.

If you have youngsters in tow, head east on Grand Street two blocks to the Children's Museum of the Arts, where the interactive exhibits provide a welcome respite from SoHo's mostly grown-up pursuits. Otherwise, walk west on Grand Street three short blocks to discover several of SoHo's better exhibition spaces clustered on the south end of Greene and Wooster streets near Grand and Canal streets. These include Deitch Projects (76 Grand St.), the Drawing Center (35 Wooster St.), and Spencer Brownstone (39 Wooster St.).

From here you may continue north on Wooster Street for Prince Street shops or first head east one block to Greene Street, where cast-iron architecture is at its finest. The block between Canal and Grand streets represents the longest row of cast-iron buildings anywhere. Handsome as they are, these buildings were always commercial, containing stores and light manufacturing firms, principally in the textile trade. (Notice the iron loading docks and the sidewalk vault covers that lead into basement storage areas.)

Two standout buildings on Greene Street are the so-called Queen of Greene Street and the King of Greene Street. Even the lampposts on Greene Street are architectural gems: note their turn-of-the-20th-century bishop's-crook style, adorned with various cast-iron curlicues from their bases to their curved tops.

Greene Street between Prince and Spring streets is notable for the SoHo Building (Nos. 104-110); towering 13 stories, it was the neighborhood's tallest building until the SoHo Grand Hotel went up in 1996. At Prince Street, walk one block west to Wooster Street, which between Prince and Spring is a retail paradise.

Like a few other SoHo streets, Wooster still has its original Belgian paving stones. Also in this vicinity is one of Manhattan's finest photography galleries, Howard Greenberg (120 Wooster St.) and the Dia Center for the Arts' New York Earth Room, a must-see reminder of art from SoHo's early days.

From Wooster Street, continue one block west on Prince Street to SoHo's main shopping drag, West Broadway. Although many big-name galleries such as Castelli and Sonnabend have moved uptown, there are still holdouts worth seeing, among them, Franklin Bowles (431 West Broadway) and Nancy Hoffman (429 West Broadway).

Continue south on West Broadway to the blocks between Spring and Broome streets to one of the area's major art galleries, the immense OK Harris (383 West Broadway). Stay on West Broadway on the west side of the street and proceed south; between Grand and Canal streets stands the SoHo Grand Hotel.

TriBeCa

From the SoHo Grand Hotel, follow West Broadway south to Canal Street, the official boundary between SoHo and TriBeCa. Continue down West Broadway. Between White and Franklin streets, stop to marvel at the life-size iron Statue of Liberty crown rising above the kitschy white-tile entrance to El Teddy's (219 West Broadway), a popular Mexican restaurant.

Continuing south on West Broadway to Duane Street, you'll pass Worth Street, once the center of the garment trade and the 19th-century equivalent of today's 7th Avenue. Turn right on Duane Street to Hudson Street and you'll find the calm, shady Duane Park. Walk one block north on Hudson Street. On the right-hand side you'll see the art deco Western Union Building at No. 60, where 19 subtly shaded colors of brick are laid in undulating patterns.

The area to the west (left), near the Hudson River docks, was once the heart of the wholesale food business. Turn off Hudson Street onto quiet Jay Street and pause at narrow Staple Street, whose green pedestrian walkway overhead links two warehouses. Also gaze up Harrison Street toward the ornate old New York Mercantile Exchange.

If you continue west on Jay Street, you'll pass the loading docks of a 100-year-old food wholesaler, Bazzini's Nuts and Confections, where an upscale retail shop peddles nuts, coffee beans, and candies; there are also a few tables where you can rest and have a snack. The entrance is on Greenwich Street.

Just north of Bazzini's, at the intersection of Harrison and Greenwich streets, is a surprising row of early-19th-century town houses lining the side of Independence Plaza, a huge high-rise apartment complex. The three-story redbrick houses were moved here from various sites in the neighborhood in the early 1970s.

Two blocks north on Greenwich Street, at Franklin Street, is the TriBeCa Film Center, owned by Robert De Niro. Two blocks south of Jay Street on Greenwich Street lies 2½-acre Washington Market Park, a landscaped oasis that has great playground equipment for children. At the corner of the park, turn right on Chambers Street, heading west toward the Hudson River. At the end of the block, cross the overpass across the West Side Highway and you'll find yourself in front of the huge Stuyvesant High School building.

Behind the school lies the north end of The Parks of Battery Park City, which has nearly 30 acres of open spaces, including sculpture installations and an esplanade.

Timing

To see SoHo and TriBeCa at their liveliest, visit on a Saturday, when the fashion-conscious crowd is joined by smartly dressed uptowners and suburbanites who come down for a little shopping and gallery hopping. If you want to avoid crowds, take this walk during the week. Keep in mind that most galleries are closed Sunday and Monday. If you allow time for browsing in a few galleries and museums, as well as a stop for lunch, this tour can easily take up to an entire day