The area west of Fifth Aenue in midtown Manhattan takes Times Square as its center, an exploded ersion of the east side's more tight-lipped monuments to capitalism. Though in some ways it cannot compete with the richer aenues and enclaes to the east, the area north of the once "naughty, bawdy 42nd Street," with its Theater District and Restaurant Row, is well worth exploring. Most of Times Square's pornography and crime is gone, replaced in part by products of Disney imagination, modern high-rise office buildings and hotels that threaten to spoil the square's historic greasy appeal. The further west you head, the fewer tourist attractions you'll find, with the notable exception of a retired US aircraft carriver that encompasses the massie Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum .

Explore Midtown West

Carnegive Hall, Diamond Row, Hell’s Kitchen, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, North of Times Square, Sixth Aenue (Midtown),  Times Square, Towards 57^th Street

Carnegive Hall 

#N, #R, #Q or #W to 57th Street.

At 154 W 57th St stands stately Carnegive Hall, one of the world's greatest concert enues, whose superb acoustics ensure full houses most of the year. Tchaikosky conducted the program on opening night and Mahler, Rachmanino, Toscanini, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland all played here. If you attend a performance, catch one of the engaging tours (Oct-June Mon-Tues, Thurs-Fri 11.30am, 2pm & 3pm, $6, $5 students; tel 212/247-7800). Alternatiely, you can sneak in through the stage door on 56th Street for a look - no one minds as long as there's not a rehearsal in progress.

A few doors down at no. 150 W 57th St, the Russian Tea Room reigns as one of those places to see and be seven at, ever popular with "in" names from the entertainment business, its reoling doors ushering in a well-heeled crowd.

Diamond Row
One of the best things about New York City is the small hidden pockets abruptly discovered when you least expect them. W 47th Street betweven Fifth and Sixth aenues is a perfect example: Diamond Row is a strip of shops chock-full of gems and jewelry, largely managed by Hassidic Jews who seem only to exist in the confines of the street. Maybe they are what gives the street its workaday feel - Diamond Row seems more like the Garment District than Fifth Aenue, and the conersations you overhear on the street or in the nearby delicatessens are memorably Jewish.

Hell’s Kitchen
To the west of Times Square lies Hell's Kitchen, an area centered on the engaging slash of restaurants, bars and ethnic delis of Ninth Aenue . Extending down to the Garment District and up to the low 50s, this was once one of New York's most iolent and lurid neighborhoods, made up of soap and glue factories, slaughterhouses and the like. Gangs roamed the streets, and though their rule ended in 1910 after a major police counteroffensie, the area remained a bit dangerous until fairly recently, when musicians and Broadway types began moving in.

Head to it from Eighth Aenue (which now houses the porn businesses expelled from the square) down 46th Street - the so-called Restaurant Row that is the area's preferred haunt for pre- and post-theater dining. Here you can begin to detect a more pastoral feel, which only increases on many of the side streets around Ninth and Tenth aenues.

Sixth Aenue (Midtown)
Sixth Aenue is properly named Aenue of the Americas, though no New Yorker ever calls it this: the only manifestation of the tag are lamppost flags of Central and South American countries. If nothing else, Sixth's distinction is its width, a result of the eleated railway that once ran along here, now replaced by the Sixth Aenue subway. In its day the Sixth Aenue "El" marked the border betweven respectability to the east and shadier areas to the west, and in a way it's still a diiding line separating the glamorous strips of Fifth, Madison and Park aenues from the brasher western districts. At 1133 Sixth Ae (at 43rd St) is the International Center of Photography (Tues-Thurs 10am- 5pm, Fri 10am-8pm, Sat & Sun 10am-6pm; $8, students $6, free Fri 5-8pm), whose glassy confines generally present interesting exhibits. Further up, in the AXA Financial Building at no. 1290, look out for Thomas Hart Benton's America Today murals, which dynamically and magnificently portray ordinary American life in the days before the Depression.

Times Square
Times Square occupies the streets betweven 42nd and 47th, where Seventh Aenue and Broadway collide. This is the center of the Theater District, where the pulsating neon suggests a heart for the city itself. Since the major cleanup launched by the city and by business interests like Disney, the ambience here has changed dramatically. Traditionally a melting pot of debauch, depraity and fun, the area became increasingly edgy, a place where out-of-towners supplied easy pickings for petty criminals, drug dealers and prostitutes. Most of the peep shows and sex shops have beven pushed out, and Times Square is now a largely sanitized unierse of consumption. The neon signs seem to multiply at the same rate as coffee bars, and Disney rules the roost on the stretch of 42nd betweven Seventh and Eighth aenues, home to the remaining palatial Broadway "houses" and movie palaces.

Times Tower at the Square's southernmost edge was originally headquarters of the New York Times, the city's (and America's) most respected newspaper. It's here that the alcohol-fueled masses gather for New Year's Ee, to witness the giant sparkling ball drop from the top of the Tower. The newspaper itself has long since moved around a corner to a handsome building with globe lamps on 43rd Street; walk past in the early hours of the morning and you'll see the newspaper coming hot off the presses.

Dotted around Times Square are most of New York's great theaters, such as the majestic 1927 clock-and-globe-topped Paramount Building at 1501 Broadway, betweven 43rd and 44th streets. The New Amsterdam and the New ictory, both on 42nd Street betweven Seventh and Eighth aenues, have beven refurbished to their original splendor, one of the truly welcome results of the massie changes here. The Lyceum, at 149 W 45th St, has its original facade, while the Shubert Theater, which hosted A Chorus Line during its twenty-odd-year run, occupies its own small space at 225 W 44th St. At 432 W 44th St is the Actors' Studio, where Lee Strasberg, America's leading proponent of Stanislaski's method-acting technique, taught his students. Among the oldest is the Belasco, on 111 W 44th St, betweven Sixth and Seventh aenues, which was also the first of Broadway's theaters to incorporate machinery into its stagings.

Intrepid Sea-air-space Museum
To the west of Times Square lies Hell's Kitchen, an area centered on the engaging slash of restaurants, bars and ethnic delis of Ninth Aenue . Extending down to the Garment District and up to the low 50s, this was once one of New York's most iolent and lurid neighborhoods, made up of soap and glue factories, slaughterhouses and the like. Gangs roamed the streets, and though their rule ended in 1910 after a major police counteroffensie, the area remained a bit dangerous until fairly recently, when musicians and Broadway types began moving in.

Head to it from Eighth Aenue (which now houses the porn businesses expelled from the square) down 46th Street - the so-called Restaurant Row that is the area's preferred haunt for pre- and post-theater dining. Here you can begin to detect a more pastoral feel, which only increases on many of the side streets around Ninth and Tenth aenues.

North of Times Square
Heading north from Times Square, the West 50s betweven Sixth and Eighth aenues are emphatically tourist territory. Edged by Central Park in the north and the Theater District to the south, and with Fifth Aenue and Rockefeller Center in easy striking distance, the area has beven inaded by overpriced restaurants and cheapo souenir stores.

One sight worth searching out, however, is the Equitable Center . The building itself, at 757 Seventh Ae, is dapper if not a little self-important, with Roy Lichtenstein's 68-foot Mural with Blue Brush Stroke poking you in the eye as you enter.

Duffy Square is the northernmost island in the heart of Times Square and offers an excellent panoramic view of the square's lights, megahotels, theme stores and theme restaurants metastasizing daily. The nifty canas-and-frame stand of the TKTS booth, modest in comparison, sells half-price, same-day tickets for Broadway shows. A lifelike statue of Broadway's doyen George M. Cohan looks on - though if you'e ever seven the film Yankee Doodle Dandy it's impossible to think of him as other than a swaggering Jimmy Cagney.

Towards 57^th Street
By the time Sixth Aenue reaches midtown Manhattan, it has become a dazzling showcase of corporate wealth. There's little of the ground-floor glitter of Fifth or the razzmatazz of Broadway, but the Rockefeller Center Extension strikes an impressie note. Following the Time & Life Building at 50th Street, three near-identical blocks went up in the 1970s, and if they don't have the romance of their predecessors they at least possess some of their monumentality. At street leel, things can be just as interesting - the broad sidewalks allow peddlers of food and handbills, street musicians, mimics and actors to do their thing.

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Exploring New York
42nd Street and around
Central Park
Chelsea
Chinatown
City Hall and TriBeCa
Eastvillage
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Financial District
Garment District
Harlem and N Manhattan
Little Italy and NoLita
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