Talking Street’s new walking tour of Lower Manhattan lets walkers use their own cell phones to hear about sites from the World Trade Center to the U.S. Custom House. At each of the 16 stops, tourists can dial the tour phone number and hear narrator Sigourney Weaver discuss the area’s past, present, and future. The tour is available starting tomorrow.

An executive producer at Candide Media, Miles Kronby, conceived of the cell-phone tour when he was traveling in the Turkish city of Istanbul several years ago. “I was very aware walking around about how much I didn’t know,” he says. Wandering in an outdoor market one afternoon, he saw cell phones for sale everywhere, and it occurred to him that they were the perfect way for visitors to get information.

Mr. Kronby says that out-of-towners and New York residents have used his first cell-phone tour, a walk through the Lower East Side that debuted last year in September. Actor Jerry Stiller narrated the story of that neighborhood’s history as a Jewish center.

When the tour became popular, plans were laid to develop a stroll through Lower Manhattan. Though the first tour was free, the new tour costs $5.95 – proceeds go to the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation. Tours of Boston and Washington, D.C., will debut within the next two months.

Each of the 16 calls on the tour lasts about two minutes, and Talking Street estimates it will take about two hours including walking time to complete the tour.

Ms. Weaver, an actress and New York resident, narrates the bulk of the tour, but other voices chime in: The reverend of St. Paul’s Chapel describes how workers rang the bells at the church just three days after the September 11 attacks, author Edwin Burrows discusses the history of Federal Hall, and the master builder of the World Trade Center, Guy Tozzoli, talks about the towers’ history. At the New York Stock Exchange, an actor reads an account of a reporter who was outside on the day of the 1929 stock market crash. At stop 15, listeners hear excerpts from Mayor Giuliani’s September 11 press conferences.

The last stop looks to the area’s future, and Mr. Kronby is excited about the ways that the tour itself can contribute to Lower Manhattan. One of the advantages of using a cell phone, he says, is that “it’s on your own schedule, at your own pace, so you can you take breaks if you want to browse or get a bite to eat.”

The tour can be accessed starting tomorrow by calling 212-586-8687. Tickets can be purchased over the phone or at www.talkingstreet.com.