For most of the 20th century the Financial District was a 9-to-5 kind of
neighborhood that emptied out at night. No longer! Thanks to the myriad
building conversions, new residential towers, and even student dorms, the number
of local residents is higher than ever. Nowadays, it is entirely possible
to bump into a neighbor on the way home around midnight, especially on the
massively "residentialized" streets like John Street.
However, density alone does not a neighborhood make. Given the area's high rents and a relentless drive by the landlords to get top dollar for their retail spaces, currently (2013/2014) the area has more in the way of upscale boutiques, targeting tourists and wealthy professionals, than in the way of grocery stores.
Most buildings in the Financial District (with the exception of recently constructed towers) are residential conversions from office towers. This may be an advantage (most of those buildings were built in an age when builders knew what they were doing, so the quality of construction was generally high), or a disadvantage ("amenities" such as light were not considered crucial for office workers back then), depending on the building, its location and other specifics. Layouts vary from small studios to almost palatial apartments and (again, thanks to the conversion phenomenon) and include all manner of weirdly shaped "loft-style" configurations.
