The historic Noho district is one of Manhattan’s most charming and historically significant neighborhoods. Studded with landmarks and alive with galleries, theaters and restaurants, this vital community is New York’s cultural heart. It was here where loft living was born. It was here that New York artists pioneered a new way of life. The walls came down and light poured in and the artists created living spaces that became the envy of their collectors.

Once the location of New York’s first botanical garden, Noho was developed by John Jacob Astor who created a broad street here that he called Lafayette Place, in honor of the hero of the American Revolution. It was christened by the Marquis de Lafayette himself in 1825, and Astor built a mansion there. Other mansions followed and soon Noho became one of New York City’s most desirable neighborhoods characterized by fashionable residences inhabited by legendary names like Vanderbilt and Delano, luxurious department stores, an opera house and broad, light filled streets.

Over time the neighborhood began to change, new industrial buildings were erected alongside the grand ones. But this was an extraordinary era in architectural history when industrial buildings utilized a breakthrough iron technology and were designed to maximize natural light to a degree never before possible. With its history of change Noho emerged as one of the richest architectural tapestries in the city, with outstanding examples of Federal, Greek Revival, Beaux Arts, Georgian, Rundbogenstil Romanesque, and Second Empire Baroque.

By the 1960s Noho and Soho were ready for an unexpected transformation. Manufacturing had declined in the area, resulting in a half-abandoned industrial slum. But artists saw instead perfect studios and they began reclaiming the elegant industrial buildings for living and working space. The extraordinary cast iron buildings, once doomed to extinction by master planner Robert Moses, were saved and over the course of less than two decades the blocks around Houston Street became the liveliest neighborhood in the city. Art galleries followed the artists, and restaurants, theaters, clubs and fashionable stores followed the galleries.

Today Noho is considered by many to be the city’s most desirable neighborhood. It’s broad streets, landmark buildings and convenient location, combine with extraordinary cultural riches to make a neighborhood where life is lived with gusto and panache. Noho is changing, but it’s still an artist’s neighborhood. Stroll down the block and look at the doorbells and you’ll find names that have changed the face of modern art.

For years Noho has been a treasure trove of antiques and mid-century modern furnishings. Dozens of the city’s best restaurants are within strolling distance. 40 Bond is midway between the sushi of Bond Street and the exquisite Italian cooking of Il Buco, and a short walk to Indochine, Balthazar or Jack’s Luxury Oyster Bar. It is also within easy walking distance of many of the best private schools in Manhattan as well as the extraordinary resources of N.Y.U.. There is no better spot for aficionados of independent film and off off Broadway theater. Nolita, home to of the city’s most innovative fashion boutiques and quirky artisanal emporia, is two blocks away, while the renaissance of the Bowery, down the block, continues to amaze, with the New Museum, new hotels, and the largest Whole Foods in the city. The gentrified East Village offers a tapestry of culture unique in America, the most vibrant young clubs, restaurants and alternative galleries are a walk away in the Lower East Side, while lively, booming Chinatown is even closer. The neighbors will tell you this is the epicenter of Manhattan’s cultural rumblings.

Tomorrow’s lifestyle starts here. It seems fitting that New York’s original elite neighborhood created by the Astors and the Vanderbilts, the neighborhood where, a century later, artists whose names are legend invented loft living, is now the site of a revolutionary concept in luxury living at 40 Bond Street.