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Hell's Kitchen Information
Hell's Kitchen (also known as Clinton and Midtown West) is a neighborhood of
New York City that includes roughly the area between 34th Street and 57th
Street, from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River.
The neighborhood which provides transportation, hospital and warehouse
infrastructure support to the Midtown Manhattan business district has a gritty
reputation that has resulted in its housing prices being lower than much of the
rest of Manhattan. A great number of actors have spent residence time in the
neighborhood thanks to its proximity to the Broadway theaters and the Actors
Studio training school.
Throughout its history, Hell's Kitchen has figured prominently in the New York
City underworld, especially in Irish-American organized crime circles. Gangsters
like Owney Madden, bootleggers like Bill Dwyer, and Westies leaders Jimmy Coonan
and Mickey Featherstone were Hell's Kitchen natives. The rough and tumble days
on the West Side figure prominently in Damon Runyon stories. The conflicts
between Puerto Ricans and Irish formed the basis of West Side Story.
Once a bastion of poor and working-class Irish-Americans, in recent years Hell's Kitchen has undergone tremendous gentrification, due to its proximity to Midtown.
New York Passenger Ship Terminal in Hell's Kitchen at 52nd Street. There are no hard and fast rules for defining a neighborhood since neighborhoods do not have formal legal standing or are even a census designated place. For the most part the neighborhood comprises the zip codes 10019 and 10036. The post office for 10019 is called Radio City Station, the original name for Rockefeller Center on Sixth Avenue.
Southern boundary: Hell's Kitchen and the Chelsea overlap and are often lumped together as the West Side since they support the Midtown Manhattan business district. The traditional dividing line is 34th Street. The name Chelsea Clinton was used for a newspaper and a restaurant before the famous first daughter. The transition area just north of Madison Square Garden and Pennsylvania Station includes the Jacob Javits Convention Center.
Eastern boundary: The neighborhood overlaps the Times Square theater district to the east at Eighth Avenue. On its southeast border, it overlaps the Garment District also on Eighth Avenue. At the southeastern corner of 34th Street and Eighth Avenue, you can find the New Yorker hotel along with the dynamic Manhattan Center building. Included in the transition area on Eighth Avenue are the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street, the Pride of Manhattan Fire Station (from which 15 firefighters died at the World Trade Center), several theaters including Studio 54, the original home of Seinfeld's Soup Nazi, and the Hearst Tower.
Northern boundary: The neighborhood edges toward the southern boundary of the Upper West Side, and 57th Street is considered by some to be the traditional northern boundary. However the neighborhood often is considered to extend to 59th Street (the southern edge of Central Park) where the avenue names change. Included in the 57th to 59th Street transition area are the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, Roosevelt Hospital, where John Lennon died in 1980 after being shot, and John Jay College.
Western boundary: The western boundary is the Hudson River.
Hell's Kitchen has stuck as the name even though real estate developers have offered alternatives of Clinton and Midtown West or even the Mid-West. The Clinton name originated in 1959 in an attempt to link the name to the DeWitt Clinton Park at 52nd and 11th Avenue. Clinton was a former New York governor.
Several different explanations exist for the original name. An early use of the phrase appears in a comment Davy Crockett made about another notorious Irish slum in Manhattan, Five Points. According to the Irish Cultural Society of the Garden City Area:
According to an article by Kirkley Greenwell, published online by the Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Association:
No one can pin down the exact origin of the label, but some refer to a tenement on 54th as the first "Hell's Kitchen." Another explanation points to an infamous building at 39th as the true original. A gang and a local dive took the name as well.... a similar slum also existed in London and was known as Hell's Kitchen. Whatever the origin of the name, it fit.
Local historian Mary Clark adds a probably-apocryphal anecdote when she states the name:
...first appeared in print on September 22, 1881 when a New York Times reporter went to the West 30s with a police guide to get details of a multiple murder there. He referred to a particularly infamous tenement at 39th Street and 10th Avenue as "Hell's Kitchen," and said that the entire section was "probably the lowest and filthiest in the city." According to this version, 39th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues became known as Hell's Kitchen and the name was later expanded to the surrounding streets. Another version ascribes the name's origins to a German restaurant in the area known as Heil's Kitchen, after its proprietors. But the most common version traces it to the story of Dutch Fred The Cop, a veteran policeman, who with his rookie partner, was watching a small riot on West 39th Street near 10th Avenue. The rookie is supposed to have said, "This place is hell itself," to which Fred replied, "Hell's a mild climate. This is Hell's Kitchen." Today, most residents of the area, and most New Yorkers in general, refer to the area as "Hell's Kitchen," with "Clinton" being the name favored by the municipality.
The beginnings of the neighborhood that would become known as Hell's Kitchen start in the mid 19th century, when immigrants from Ireland, most of whom were refugees from the Great Potato Famine began settling on the west side of Manhattan in shantytowns along the Hudson River. Many of these immigrants found work on the docks nearby, or along the railroad which carried freight into the city along 11th avenue.
After the American Civil War the population increased exponentially, as tenements were erected and increased immigration added to the neighborhood's congestion. Many in this poverty stricken area turned to gang life and the neighborhood soon became known as the "most dangerous area on the American Continent." At the turn of the century, the neighborhood was controlled by the violent Gopher Gang, led by the notorious Owney Madden.
The violence escalated during the 1920s, as Prohibition was implemented. The many warehouses in the district served as ideal breweries for the bootleggers and rumrunners who controlled the illicit liquor. Gradually the earlier gangs such as the Hell's Kitchen Gang were transformed into organized crime entities and Owney Madden, the one time leader of the Gopher Gang, became one of the most powerful mobsters in New York.
After the repeal of Prohibition, many of the organized crime elements moved into other rackets, such as illegal gambling and union shakedowns. The postwar era was characterized by a flourishing waterfront, and work as a longshoreman was plentiful. By the end of the 1950's, however, the implementation of containerized shipping led to the decline of the West Side piers and many longshoremen found themselves out of work. In addition, the construction of the Lincoln Tunnel had devastated much of Hell's Kitchen to the south of 39th street.
Today Hell's Kitchen is a mixed neighborhood of yuppies, artists, hipsters, longtime Irish, Puerto Rican, and Dominican residents, and an increasing number of gays. Now largely free from street crime, it is, for the most part, removed from the degree of gangsterism which has long characterized the neighborhood.
Although the neighborhood is immediately west of New York's main business district, development lagged for more than 30 years because of strict zoning rules called the Special Clinton District designed to protect the neighborhood's low rise character.
When the third incarnation of Madison Square Garden at 50th and Eighth Avenue was torn down in 1968, New York developed a master plan calling for for two to three thousand hotel rooms, 25,000 apartments, 25 million square feet of office Space and a new super liner terminal in the neighborhood which it described as "blocks of antiquated and deteriorating structures of every sort." During this time a proposal was made to build the world's tallest building on the Madison Square Garden site and a massive convention center at 44th Street and the Hudson River.
Residents organized to fight the developments. In October, 1974 the Planning Commission approved the establishment of the Special Clinton District and Mayor Ed Koch moved the Jacob Javits Convention Center to 33rd and the Hudson River.
The District severely restricted development in the neighborhood for more than 20 years. The world's tallest building was not to rise and its Madison Square site was to remain a parking lot until 1989.
43rd to 56th Streets between 8th and 10th Avenues. R-7 density, 6-story height limit on new buildings, suggested average apartment size of two bedrooms. (This was a response to the fact that between 1960 and 1970 developers had torn down 2,300 family-sized units and replaced them with 1,500 smaller units.)
Perimeter Area: 8th Avenue, 42nd and 57th Streets. Bulkier development permitted to counterbalance the down zoning in the preservation area.
Mixed Use Area: 10th and 11th Avenues between 43rd and 50th Streets. Mixed residential and manufacturing. New residential development only permitted in conjunction with manufacturing areas.
Other Areas: West of 11th Avenue. Industrial and waterfront uses.
The mixed use area and other area are now combined into "Other areas."
Building height in the Preservation Area cannot exceed 66 feet or seven stories, whichever is less.
Special permits are required for all demolition and construction in the SCD, including demolition of "any sound housing in the District" and any rehabilitation that increases the number of dwellings in a structure. New developments, conversions or alterations which create new units or zero bedroom units are required to contain at least 20% two bedroom apartments with a minimum room size of 168 square feet. Alterations which reduce the percentage of two bedroom units are not permitted unless the resulting building meets the 20% two bedroom requirement.
In the original provisions no building could be demolished unless it was found to be unsound. Manhattan Plaza performing artist residence and Film Center Cafe on Ninth Avenue. Hell's Kitchen's gritty reputation has meant that housing prices there tended to be cheaper than elsewhere in Manhattan.
Given the lower costs and its proximity to Broadway theaters, the neighborhood is a haven for aspiring actors. Many famous actors and entertainers have resided there, ranging from Bob Hope and James Dean to Jerry Seinfeld and Madonna. This is due in large part to the Actors Studio on West 44th, which rose to prominence under Lee Strasberg and is famed for its method acting style used by such actors as Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, and James Gandolfini.
Manhattan Plaza at 42nd Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues was built in the 1970s to house the artists. It consists of two 46-story towers with 70 percent of the apartments set aside performing artists who are subsidized with federal Section 8 housing grants.
The neighborhood is also home to a number of broadcast and music-recording studios, including the CBS Broadcast Center at 524 West 57th Street (also the home of Black Entertainment Television's 106 & Park show), Sony Music Studios at 460 West 54th Street, and Right Track Recording's Studio A509 orchestral recording facility at West 38th Street and 10th Avenue. The syndicated Montel Williams show is also taped locally at the Unitel Studios, 433 W. 53rd Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. AV8 records is housed in the film center building.
Restaurant Row on West 46th Street and Ninth Avenue is noted for its many ethnic restaurants. The Ninth Avenue Association's International Food Festival, stretches through the Kitchen from 37th to 57th Streets every May, usually on the third weekend of the month has been going on since 1974 and is one of the oldest street fairs in the city. In addition to the usual American, Caribbean, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Irish and Mexican restaurants, there are multiple Afghan, Argentine, Ethiopian, Peruvian, Turkish, and Vietnamese restaurants.