New York Songlines: 6th Street

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Peter Cooper Park

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Corner: Dolphins restaurant's north wall had the best September 11 mural I've seen. But Cooper Union, the building's owner, had it painted over because it was time to ''move on.''

202: Laundrobot

206: Martin, androgyny for girls

208: Andrei Kushnir Michele Taylor: American Painting is a small gallery with a realist focus. Both the partners are artists whose work is displayed here; Kushnir has done a series of paintings of East Villages businesses that capture the way individual addresses make up a neighborhood.

Also at this address are Fumi, a boutique, and Finyl Vinyl, a connaisseurs' used record store founded 1985. In the basement is Exoskeleton Inc., the production company of independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch.

218: A beautiful king guards the doorway.

The Ukrainian Museum

222-224: A new home for the cultural institution now located on 2nd Avenue.

228-226: Stone carvings on this c. 1890 building feature several screaming heads.

236: Apartment building called Villa East

238: Circa Now, vintage store. ''Part of my obsession has always been to find the history in everything, especially when the people getting rid of it don't care,'' says co-owner Crissy Wrong. ''Diaries, locks of hair and lots of clothes wind up in possession because I feel like I'm holding a secret, a life forgotten.'' The space once sold Japanese woodworking tools, and still has great Japanese-style handcrafted cabinets.

Also at this address is DecaDance, DJs record store founded 1986.

Corner (101 2nd Ave): Block Drugs has a cool old sign that says it was established in 1885.

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Cooper Union Academic Building

201-209: 2009 should see the completion of Cooper Union's new engineering and art building, a futuristic glass-walled nine-story structure designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis.

In this spot from 1905-2006 was Hewitt Memorial Hall, a Cooper Union building named for Abraham Hewitt, Peter Cooper's son-in-law and a mayor of NYC. It was kind of a depressing building, really.

It in turn was built on the site of the Tompkins Market Armory, which housed the 27th Regiment of the New York National Guard--the force that put down the Stone Cutter's Riot of 1834, the Astor Place Riot of 1849 and the Draft Riots of 1863.

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Corner (102 2nd Ave): Sunny's Florist

Indian Restaurant Row

Actually, most of these are Bengali, not Indian, which is why they serve beef and not pork. Several are BYOB. Most are cheap; opinions on quality differ. Owners/employees of these restaurants were responsible for founding the mosque on 11th Street.

304: Zerza Bar, Moroccan idiosyncracy; was Kashmir Tandoori.

306: Coup de Couer (French for ''heart attack''), a boutique, was Worldly Possessions, aka Back from Guatemala, multicultural crafts.

308: Brick Lane is Indian, not Bengali; named for a London street known for its curry. Was Goa Tandoori, a slightly upscale Bengali. Also Rose of India. In the 1960s, this address was Electric Lotus.

310: Taj

318: Taj Mahal

320: Angon on the Sixth was Bombay Dining. Self-described as an ''Indian culinary den.''

322: Raj Mahal was Raga

324: Calcutta, one of the few "Indian" restaurants with a Bengali-related name

326: Sonali is a favorite of Miranda's on Sex and the City; also Rose of Bombay

328: Sonar Gaow is filled with strings of lights.

330: Panna, more lights

334: Mitali East, some say the best of the block's Bengalis. Guitarist Tom Morello usually eats here when he's in town.

338: For a change of pace: Awash, Ethiopian; Mara's Homemade, Cajun/Creole. Used to be Guru, a non-Bengali Indian restaurant that specialized in dosa.

340: Tribal Soundz: Drums, digeridoos and world music

342: Bengal Halal Deli & Grocery sells South Asian spices and beer.

Corner: Banjara is a bit fancier than most; it's named for an Indian people related to the Romani (aka Gypsies).

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Corner (104 2nd Ave): Bamboo House, Chinese/Japanese; Baluchi's, local Indian chain whose entrance is around the corner.

309-311: Odyssey House, substance-abuse recovery

Community Synagogue/Raiskin Center

325: Was St Marks Lutheran, German-American church that lost a thousand parishioners in the 1904 Gen. Slocum disaster.

345: Gandhi stands out from the other Indian restaurants, if only by being across the street.

347 (corner): Was Indian Spice House, grocery where you could buy Indian beer for the BYOB places. Now it's Mancora, a Peruvian restaurant.

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Village View Houses

Corner (93 Ave A): Bierman Court apartments. Ground floor holds Benny's Burritos, ironic (but tasty) Mexican.

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Corner: East Village Laundrette had a nice sign.

405: Caravan of Dreams, shabby-chic vegetarian

411: Site of the German Poliklinik, opened in 1883.

415: Anshe Meseritz, synagogue dating to 1910.

421: This building, which looks like a giant-robot laboratory, was actually built in 1919-21 as a New York Edison transformer substation--turning DC current into AC. Since 1980 it's been owned by artist Walter De Maria.

431: Was Center of the Proskurover Zion Congregation

433: Death & Company, stylish bar, was Raga, Indian fusion.

439: A-1 Records has polaroids of all the DJs who shop there.

441: Cherry Tavern, likably scruffy bar. A hangout for the original punk rockers.

443: Was H2O, a gay bar that a reader describes as "one of the great unsung staples of the East Village underground --friendly & cozy, yet fast-paced, grunged-out and edgy as all hell." Later was el Eden, fancy chocolate store. Now gominyc, a cute, friendly store that sells recycled crafts--e.g. stuffed animals made out of sweaters.

445 (corner): Was Via Della Zoccolette (''Street of the Sexy Girl,'' a place in Rome) features cicchetti, the Italian version of tapas; replaced Pisces, long-running seafood place.

South:

Corner: Con Edison substation

520: Joe's Bar, classic dive bar

530: Creative Little Garden, an alluring space.

6th Street-Avenue B Garden

One of the largest and most elaborate community gardens. Was famous for its 65-foot tower of found art, but after the death of its creator, Eddie Boros, it became structurally unsound and had to be taken down.

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Sidewalk

Corner (94 Ave A): All-night rest- aurant/ bar, opened 1978, features live entertainment, including over-the-edge comic Rick Shapiro. Hosts The Fort, which was originally an illegal club on Rivington where the anti-folk movement was born.

505: Eastern Bloc, Soviet-themed gay bar, was briefly the dive bar Duck but was for several years Wonder Bar, a popular, straight-friendly gay spot, painted with Wonder Bread-style spots.

507: Gladiators Gym, no-nonsense body-building; OG stands for Oriental Grill.

509: Kion is a trippy bar with a waterfall on the ceiling. Was the high-concept restaurant Industry (Food), earlier known as Coup.

511: Identity was Anatomy Bar and Lounge, before that Coz

513: Buenos Aires, Argentine

539: Federation of East Village Artists, the folks behind the Howl! festival.

543: Love Shine, second-hand and novelties

South:

The Earth School

Corner: A public elementary school opened in 1992 with an environmental and peace focus.

620: Grape and Grain is a stylish bar.

6B&C Botanical Garden

624: Perhaps the most beautiful of all the East Village's community gardens.

Trinity Lower East Side Parish & Shelter

630: This gorgeous red brick building was designed by Calvert Vaux (of Central Park fame) in 1890 to house the 6th Street Industrial School of the Children's Aid Society. Later the Sloane Children's Center.

636: Iglesia de Dios is a former synagogue

638: Sixth Street Community Center, in another former synagogue. Houses Earth Celebrations/Coalition for the Preservation of Gardens.

644: The address of Joseph Rosenberg, grandfather of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, whose immigration to New York on September 11, 1901 provided the title of Gould's last collection of essays, I Have Landed.

Corner: Loisaida mural (2000), by neighborhood artist Chico. "Loisaida" is Spanglish for "Lower East Side."

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North:

Corner: Horus Cafe has its namesake deity outside; there's another branch at the corner of 10th and A. Was Lower East Side Country Club; before that La Gould Finch, a restaurant that helped launch the gentrification of Avenue B. The building used to be home to Michael Gira and Jarboe of the post-punk band Swans; Henry Rollins worked on one of his albums here.

627: Neil Strauss, a freelance writer who trained himself to be arguably the world's greatest pick-up artist, an effort chronicled in the book The Game, lived here at the beginning of his writing career.

South:

Corner: Lower East Side II (NYCHA)

740: Noah's Ark Church

742: Mascot Flats apartments

754 (corner): Perla Pueblo

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701: Iglesia Pentecostal Sarepta. "Sarepta" in the Bible is a Phoenecian city where Elijah performed miracles.

Stannard-Diggs Garden

719: A recently legalized squat inhabited by "aging radicals, punk rock parents and folks who just gravitated here by chance," according to City Limits.

737: Emmanuel Presbyterian Church; though the building was reconstructed in 1970 (and looks it), the church has been on this site since 1874, and the congregation was founded in 1852.

739: Science-fiction writer Samuel R. Delany lived at this address in the early 1960s.

South:

Lillian Wald Houses

Public housing project named for Lillian D. Wald (1867-1940), who provided aid to the Lower East Side through the Henry Street Settlement and the Visiting Nurses Society. She fought for women's suffrage and against child labor, and help start the Women's Trade Union League. Margaret Sanger of Planned Parenthood was her protegee. Boys and Girls Republic,

888: A Lower East Side children's group founded in 1930 by Mayor LaGuardia as Boys Brotherhood Republic. The facility here, a basketball gymnasium, was built in the 1960s with the backing of Brooke Astor--the first privately funded project built on city-owned land. The Republic was adopted in 1998 by the Henry Street Settlement and got a name change as it was opened to both boys and girls.

There is a footbridge here across FDR Drive to East River Park.

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Jacob Riis Houses

A large public housing complex built in 1949. Named for a Danish-born photojournalist whose work documenting New York tenement life, especially his book How the Other Half Lives, helped inspire slum-clearing.