Regular readers know that I recently took a little detour away from my usual subject matter to post some pictures of Lower Manhattan. (I’ve got a lot more, by the way, but I have to clean up my startup disk to make room for them on iPhoto. Nightmare.)

Meanwhile, you can read all about the transformation of Lower Manhattan here, in the New York Sun:

Luxury Seems To Be Set For the Lower East Side

Ultra-luxury five-star hotels, the largest supermarket in the Northeast, apartments renting for $80 a square foot, condominiums selling for $1,500 a square foot, top-flight restaurants, a hip nightlife scene, and high-end boutiques: It’s not TriBeCa, the meatpacking district, or the High Line area I’m talking about — it’s the Bowery and the Lower East Side.

“Once a few new projects that were initially viewed as trailblazing succeed and take hold, it makes it easier for other projects to prosper and the gap between the lower end and the high end of the market and condo prices diminishes. That’s precisely what is happening to the Lower East Side,” Mr. Ivanhoe continued. “Once the area is viewed as acceptable for people to live in safely and some entertainment, shopping, and services fill in, the foundation is in place for a strong, stable area for years to come.”

“Its not just condo mania, it’s a confluence of everything coming together in the Lower East Side,” a principal of Columbia Street Developers, Marshall Sohne, said. “From working in the neighborhood, I got to see some of the forces at work. The Bowery was the commercial kitchen district. Now just look at Bond Street between Lafayette and the Bowery where people want a location that they are paying real numbers for lofts without any services. These are ‘hip’ artistic types with big dollars, willing to pay the type of prices that were paid by the tycoons living in the Time Warner Center, but these people prefer to be on Bond Street.”

Read the whole thing if you dare. Here’s a sampling of what a neighborhood in transition looks like.

the old Bond Street, up close

Bond Street, looking east from Broadway

Bond Street, looking west toward Broadway, where it ends in a T

Bond Street construction, seen from a Bleecker Street rooftop

the new 23-story hotel going up on the Bowery

The 23-story hotel is being built around the building where Hettie Jones, ex-wife of Amiri Baraka (ne LeRoi Jones), lives. You can read all about it here. (I snuck onto the building site and took a lot of up-close-and-personal shots like this before getting chased away by a guard. Exciting!)

In the backyard of the new Bowery Hotel

Across the street from the new Bowery Hotel. Just what you want to see after you’ve paid $600 a night for your room, right?