I'd like to think New London's best years still lie ahead.

Maybe the best legacy left by the head of the discredited and now defanged New London Development Corp., which tore down so much in the name of progress that never happened, might be the moniker: hip little city.

On good days in downtown New London, if you squint a bit to miss the empty storefronts, you can indeed see the stirrings of a hip little city in the making.

Certainly the bones are here, the still-largely intact architectural skeleton, up and down Bank and State streets, of a bustling port, once home to one of the world's biggest whaling fleets.

One encouraging new project is the final renovations of a prominent building on lower State Street, by Quinn & Hary Marketing. The spectre of a new National Coast Guard Museum looms large.

On a warm spring night downtown, with the bars and restaurants hopping, you can see the makings of hip.

But this week I also got a glimpse of how high the bar might be, if we might like to think New London's best days are indeed ahead.

I had the good fortune to get a narrated walking tour of Bank Street from 72-year-old Bill Culotta, who has a crystal clear memory and good storytelling manner.

With Culotta as narrator, you can drift back in time, to the 1950s and 1960s, when New London was quite the hip little city, the center of commerce for most all of shoreline eastern Connecticut.

Culotta gave me a preview of the free walk he will lead May 6 for New London Landmarks, the nonprofit dedicated to historic preservation and development of the city.

The walk here, scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. from Parade Plaza, is meant to coincide with others around the world held in memory of Jane Jacobs, the trailblazing New York urban planner and preservation advocate, who is credited with saving a lot of the urban fabric of New York.

Culotta will take lucky walkers down old Bank Street, when New London was enjoying its last heyday, the whaling fleet long gone but some city mills still humming, the downtown a regional hub.

Sidewalks were crowded weekdays and weekends, with every storefront filled and second and third floors used by doctors, lawyers, dentists, accountants and other professionals.

There were no suburban malls and five major department stores downtown, including Montgomery Ward, F.W. Woolworth Co., Kresge's and W.T. Grant. They all had soda fountains.

There were two newsstands, penny candy stores, three music stores, shoe repair shops, a tuxedo shop, bakeries, butchers, a sporting goods store, dance studios, pool halls and bowling alleys.

Culotta watched John Wayne in the 3D western "Hondo" at the Victory Theater on Parade Plaza. The Victory, one of four theaters, is gone now, although the Garde on State Street and the Capitol, long shuttered on Bank Street, remain.

Of course New London was still a Navy town then, with submarines berthed on the outskirts of downtown, and that meant thriving bars, uniform shops and tattoo parlors. There was also, Culotta concedes with a shrug, a pretty lively prostitution trade ... another business that has migrated to the Web.

Culotta, a Vietnam veteran who reluctantly answered the call to service, also remembers a lively hippie culture downtown. There was a macrobiotic grocery store and a waterbed store.

The tradition of Jane's Walk — this will be the first in New London — honors her belief that the best way for people to understand and relate to their communities is to walk them.

Participants in Jane's Walk are encouraged to share their own experiences and ideas and connect with neighbors.

So if you know the old hip little New London, and want to share, or if you are dreaming of the next one and want to learn more, Culotta's walk is for you.

The only rule, he told me, is that there are no rules.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com