This is the third and final installment of Pan Am's audio walking tour of New York City.  The clip features areas of the Lower East Side, Greenwich Village, and Washington Square Park, and much like the two previously posted tours (Midtown and Central Park), the audio offers a lighthearted jaunt that belies the big changes these neighborhoods would face in the near future.   The guide describes the influx of artists into post-manufacturing districts like Soho, the rapidly changing ethnic enclaves of the Lower East Side, and the newly minted "East Village", a neighborhood that was just beginning to develop its own identify. Listen to highlights of the three neighborhoods described below and see the interactive map for the full tour.  

The Lower East Side
This section describes the recent influx of Puerto Ricans into the traditionally Jewish areas of the LES as a rather pleasant and relaxed transition.  "Spanish and Yiddish now seem to be locked in a benevolent struggle for the right to be called the official language of the neighborhood. If there was ever a part of New York that deserved the name international melting pot, then the Lower East Side is it. This district, with its unpretentious, congested living quarters has given the city some of its most successful people in all walks of life." 

SoHo and The Cast Iron District
Moving on from the LES, the guide takes you to the corner of West Houston and Broadway, an area that was still full of artists inhabiting the huge loft spaces and cast iron district buildings where the upscale shops of boutiques of SoHo now reside. The guide offers a rather strange suggestion that tourists should randomly knock on doors of buildings and that "the artists would welcome a visit from you, in the hope that their creations might attract your attention."

Washington Square
Young People, Guitars, and Protest Signs —they are part of village life.  The guide describes the village as New York's counter part of the Left Bank, despite the fact that "most of the serious artists have moved to an area now called the East Village."