The canyons of Wall Street are lined with condos. Dog walkers on strolls outnumber hung-over assistants on cigarette breaks. Gilded-Age moneymaking monoliths now house spas, sushi joints and luxury retailers. What happened? Coming to terms with ­Lower Manhattan's makeover.

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From the thirty-eighth-floor window of his 30 Broad Street office, Legend Merchant Group's Sean Gambino looks out at the epicenter of New York's storied Financial District and shakes his head. A 16-year veteran of the securities industry, Gambino, whose firm specializes in SPAC deals, has a profound appreciation for the history down here, and for the way things used to be.

"Every day I watch the floor traders parked outside the Exchange, furiously working their BlackBerrys," Gambino, 37, says. "There's not as much face-to-face interaction."

The essence and culture of the area is changing, he explains. Take the Hermès store at 15 Broad, for example. "Not long ago, there was a Bugatti Veyron parked outside the store," Gambino recalls. "It was decked out in Hermès leather and filled with all this custom leather luggage. Not what I'm used to seeing on Wall Street."

Not only is Manhattan's ­Financial District -- call it ­everything south of Chambers Street -- welcoming new luxury retailers, but the fabric of the entire area is being radically transformed. What was once a cavernous citadel of men, concrete and their money­making schemes has, thanks to a real-estate boom, tantalizing post-9/11 tax abatements and Liberty Bonds, emerged in the past few years as a high-end developer's dream.

While a range of potential setbacks lies ahead -- looming recession, the bursting of the real-estate bubble, uncertainty surrounding the future of the lifeblood NYSE -- a host of other forces suggests that the makeover of the Financial District has only begun. And, furthermore, that there is no turning back. Hybrid trading may spell the end of the NYSE, but insofar as FiDi is concerned, the term is emblematic, as commercial melds with residential, historic allure with modern amenities. Fittingly, it is money and crowds (rich people, many of them foreigners) driving the transformation.

"It's more than the arrival of a Thomas Pink store changing the landscape; there's a change in attitude as people think of FiDi as a place to live," explains Scott Placona, a 25-year-old investment-banking associate at Joseph Gunnar & Co. "It's not so much about the disappearance of tradition, but a fresh appreciation for what Lower Manhattan means to the city -- and the world."

"If J.P. Morgan were around today to see BMW open a showroom on his block, I think he'd be stunned," says David Miranda, a former NYSE specialist who grew up on Sullivan Street just north of the neighborhood. "This is a major metamorphosis."

Starting at the intersection of Wall and Broad and radiating ­outward, river to river, the forging of an upbeat, upscale destination is a working order with no resistance. Receding are the days when interloping armies simply worked in the Financial District and ­bolted as fast as they could finagle use of the company car service. "Even a few years ago, it was so empty down here after the closing bell you could lie down in the street," says Vincent Alessi, a mana­ging partner at Bobby Van's Steakhouse, which arrived on Broad Street in 2005. "Now we're packed almost every night with a regular Wall Street crowd."

In 1990, just 14,000 residents lived south of Chambers. Today, that number has grown to more than 50,000 -- and Elizabeth Berger, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, projects it will reach 60,000 by year's end. Since 2005, more than 13 million square feet of former office space have been converted into some 11,000 new apartments. "Our mission is to animate Lower Man­hattan," Berger declares. "This neighborhood is not 'on the verge' of anything -- it's here."

Everywhere in FiDi one finds startling evidence of this trans­formation: the luxury-brand retailers (Tiffany's, Hermès, Thomas Pink) that have set up shop within spitting distance of the Big Board; the condos that have engulfed 25 Broad, once the storied Broad Exchange and the former home of PaineWebber, not to mention a historic hub for legions of curbside traders; the $27,800-per-year prep school, Claremont Prep, that resides in what was once the Bank of America International building. The former JPMorgan Chase building at 75 Wall has a beach planned for its forty-second-floor deck. Pram-pushing parents populate the circa-1903 Cocoa Exchange building on Wall Street Court. Artful lodger André Balazs -- who anointed FiDi the new Soho last year -- is diving in with his 47-story William Beaver House across from Delmonico's. Epic megaliths steeped in history, such as the former Chase Manhattan digs at 20 Pine, have been converted to luxury residences replete with yoga studios, swimming pools and rooftop gardens.

But what does this all mean for the money monoculture that has dominated the labyrinths of Lower Manhattan for almost four cen­turies? Will it be cast aside by a master plan unseen in New York since the days of Robert Moses, or might it be the pivot of the most dynamic turn yet of FiDi's evolutionary wheel?

That, indeed, is the big-money question -- $20 billion rebuilds the World Trade Center site alone -- but in this New York financial story, the bulls are already edging the bears.

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