The 16 1/2-block national historic district contains most of the Victorian-style buildings that rose in San Diego after Alonzo Horton arrived in 1867 bent on supplanting San Diego's Old Town with a new downtown closer to the waterfront. Business boomed in New Town in the late 1800s, when Market Street was the center of the downtown commercial district, but at the turn of the 20th century commerce moved west toward Broadway, and many of San Diego's first buildings fell into disrepair. During the early 1900s, prostitutes picked up sailors in lively area taverns and dance halls, and crime flourished; the blocks between Market Street and the waterfront were best avoided. The quarter became known as the Stingaree district, possibly because, it was said, you could be stung as easily here as by a stingray in San Diego Bay.

When the move for downtown redevelopment gained momentum in the 1970s, there was talk of bulldozing the buildings and starting from scratch. History buffs, developers, architects, and artists formed the Gaslamp Quarter Council, however, and gathered funds from the government and private benefactors to clean up and preserve the quarter, restoring the finest old buildings, and attracting businesses and the public back to its heart. Their efforts have paid off. Former flophouses have become choice office buildings, and the area is filled with trendy shops, restaurants and nightclubs (including a flashy new one in a refurbished produce warehouse at the corner of 6th and Island avenues, named Stingaree in honor of the bad old days). During baseball season, the streets flood with Padres fans, and festivals, such as Mardi Gras in the Gaslamp in February, bring in the partygoers. At lunchtime, the eateries are crowded with conventioneers who stroll over in the sunshine from the nearby convention center. To miss the Gaslamp Quarter would be to miss San Diego's most exciting neighborhood.

William Heath Davis House (410 Island Ave., at 4th Ave., Gaslamp Quarter. 619/233-4692), one of the first residences in town, houses the Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation, the district's curator. Before Alonzo Horton came to town, Davis, a prominent San Franciscan -- born in Honolulu to a Boston shipping family -- had made an unsuccessful attempt to develop the waterfront area. In 1850 he had this prefab saltbox-style house shipped around Cape Horn and assembled in San Diego (it was originally located at State and Market streets). Self-guided tours ($5) of the house are available during museum hours, which are Tuesday-Saturday 10-6, Sunday 9-3. Regularly scheduled two-hour walking tours of the historic district leave from the house on Saturday at 11 and cost $10. The museum also sells detailed self-guided tour maps of the district for $2.

The Victorian Horton Grand Hotel (311 Island Ave., Gaslamp Quarter. 619/544-1886) was created in the mid-1980s by joining together two historic hotels, the Kahle Saddlery and the Grand Hotel, built in the boom days of the 1880s; Wyatt Earp stayed at the Kahle Saddlery -- then called the Brooklyn Hotel -- while he was in town speculating on real estate ventures and opening gambling halls. The two hotels were not originally located at this address; they were once about four blocks away, but were dismantled and reconstructed to make way for Horton Plaza. A small Chinese Museum behind the lobby serves as a tribute to the surrounding Chinatown district, a collection of modest structures that once housed Chinese laborers and their families.

The majority of the quarter's landmark buildings are on 4th and 5th avenues, between Island Avenue and Broadway. If you don't have much time, stroll down 5th Avenue, where highlights include the Backesto Building (No. 614), the Mercantile Building (No. 822), the Louis Bank of Commerce (No. 835), and the Watts-Robinson Building (No. 903). The Romanesque-revival Keating Hotel (432 F St., at 5th Ave., Gaslamp Quarter) was designed by the same firm that created the famous Hotel Del Coronado. At the corner of 4th Avenue and F Street, peer into the Hard Rock Cafe, which occupies a restored turn-of-the-20th-century tavern with a 12-foot mahogany bar and a spectacular stained-glass domed ceiling.

The section of G Street between 6th and 9th avenues has become a haven for galleries; stop in one of them to pick up a map of the downtown arts district. Just to the north, on E and F streets from 6th to 12th avenues, the evolving Urban Art Trail has added pizzazz to drab city thoroughfares by transforming such things as trash cans and traffic controller boxes into canvases. For additional information about the historic area, call the Gaslamp Quarter Association (619/233-5227) or log on to their Web site www.gaslamp.org.