Hell's Kitchen—also known as Clinton, or Midtown West on real estate listings—is a neighborhood on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. It is generally bordered by 34th Street (or 41st Street) to the south, 59th Street to the north, Eighth Avenue to the east, and the Hudson River to the west.

Hell's Kitchen had long been a bastion of poor and working-class Irish Americans. Its gritty reputation has long held real-estate prices below those of most other areas of Manhattan. By 1969, the City Planning Commission's Plan for New York City reported that development pressures related to its Midtown location were driving people of modest means from the area. Gentrification has accelerated since the early 1980s, and rents have risen rapidly.

In addition to its long-established Irish-American and Hispanic-American populations, Hell's Kitchen has a large LGBTQ population and is home to many LGBTQ bars and businesses."Hell's Kitchen LGBTQ+ Nightlife and Dining" , nycgo.com, April 4, 2017 The neighborhood has long been a home to fledgling and working actors; it is the home of the Actors Studio training school and sits near Broadway theatres.

Hell's Kitchen is part of Manhattan Community District 4. It is patrolled by the 10th and Midtown North Precincts of the New York City Police Department. The area provides transport, medical, and warehouse-infrastructure support to the business district of Manhattan. It is known for its extensive selection of multi-ethnic, small, and relatively inexpensive restaurants, delicatessens, bodegas, bars, and associated nightlife.

Boundaries

The name "Hell's Kitchen" generally refers to the area between 34th to the south and 59th Street to the north. Starting west of Eighth Avenue and the north side of 43rd Street, city zoning regulations generally limit buildings to six stories. As a result, most of the buildings are older, and are often walk-up apartments. For the most part, the neighborhood encompasses 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.Benson, Michael R. "Clinton frets over that gleam in developers' eyes" , The New York Times, December 22, 1985. Accessed May 23, 2020. "Hell's Kitchen, which stretched from 40th to 59th Streets and from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson, is now called Clinton. The modern district reaches south to 34th Street."Jacobson, Aileen. "Living In Hell's Kitchen: Where East Village Grit Meets the Artsy West Side" , The New York Times, November 11, 2020. Accessed November 15, 2020. "Stretching from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson River (busy commercial thoroughfare to sublime park) and from West 59th to West 41st Streets (sleek Time Warner Center to scruffy Port Authority bus terminal), Hell's Kitchen is a jumble of contrasts."

The neighborhood overlaps Times Square and the Theater District to the east at Eighth Avenue. On its southeast border, it overlaps the Garment District also on Eighth Avenue. Two landmarks are located here – the New Yorker Hotel at 481 Eighth Avenue, and the Manhattan Center building at the northwest corner of 34th Street and Eighth Avenue. Included in the transition area on Eighth Avenue are the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street, the Pride of Midtown fire station (from which an entire shift, 15 firefighters, died at the World Trade Center), several theatres including Studio 54, the original soup stand of Seinfelds "The Soup Nazi", and the Hearst Tower.

The northern edge of Hell's Kitchen borders the southern edge of the Upper West Side, though the section west of Ninth Avenue and south of 57th Street is also part of the Columbus Circle neighborhood. 57th Street was traditionally the boundary between the Upper West Side and Hell's Kitchen, but another interpretation puts the northern border at 59th Street, where the names of the north–south avenues change. Included between 57th and 59th Streets the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle; Hudson Hotel; Mount Sinai West, where John Lennon died in 1980 after being shot; and John Jay College.

Beyond the southern boundary is Chelsea. The Hudson Yards neighborhood overlaps with Hell's Kitchen, and the areas are often lumped together as "West Midtown", given their proximity to the Midtown Manhattan business district. The traditional dividing line with Chelsea is 34th Street. The area between the rail corridor at Pennsylvania Station and the West Side Yard and 42nd Street, and east of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, is also known as Hell's Kitchen South. Part of the southern edge of Hell's Kitchen, on Ninth Avenue between 35th and 40th streets, is designated as the Paddy's Market Historic District, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2022.

The western border of the neighborhood is the Hudson River at the Hudson River Park and West Side Highway.

Name

Several explanations exist for the origin of the neighborhood's current 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:

Local historian Mary Clark explained the name thus:

The 1929 book Manna-Hatin: The Story of New York states that the Panic of 1857 led to the formation of gangs "in the notorious 'Gas House District' at Twenty-First Street and the East River, or in 'Hell's Kitchen', in the West Thirties".

Hell's Kitchen is frequently used to name the neighborhood, although real estate developers designate the area as "Clinton" and "Midtown West". The "Clinton name", used by the municipality of New York City, originated in 1959 in an attempt to change the image of the neighborhood by linking the area to DeWitt Clinton Park at 52nd and Eleventh Avenue, named after the 19th century New York governor, though The New York Times noted that those who live in the area "prefer Hell's Kitchen" as the name for the neighborhood.Jscobson, Aileen. "Hell's Kitchen: Where East Village Grit Meets the Artsy West Side", The New York Times, November 11, 2020. Accessed March 10, 2024. "By the 1960s, civic leaders seeking to improve the area's image began referring to it as Clinton, after a family that owned property there in the 19th century. Most residents, however, prefer Hell's Kitchen."

History

Early history and development

On the island of Manhattan when Europeans first saw it, the Great Kill formed from three small streams that united near present-day Tenth Avenue and 40th Street, and then wound through the low-lying Reed Valley, renowned for fish and waterfowl,Gerard T. Koeppel, Water for Gotham: A History, 2001:10. emptying into the Hudson River at a deep bay on the river at the present 42nd Street.Eric W. Sanderson, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, 2009: Appendix A, p. 253 ; refs. G.E. Hill and G.E. Waring Jr, "Old wells and water-courses on the isle of Manhattan", in Historic New York, M.W. Goodwin, A.C. Royce, and R. Putnam, 1897; and others. The name was retained in a tiny hamlet called Great Kill, which became a center for carriage-making. The upland to the south and east became known as Longacre, the predecessor of Longacre Square, now Times Square.Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, 1999:721.

One of the large farms of the colonial era in this neighborhood was that of Andreas Hopper and his descendants, extending from today's 48th Street nearly to 59th Street and from the river east to what is now Sixth Avenue. One of the Hopper farmhouses, built in 1752 for John Hopper the younger, stood near 53rd Street and Eleventh Avenue. Christened "Rosevale" for its extensive gardens, it was the home of the War of 1812 veteran, Gen. Garrit Hopper Striker, and lasted until 1896, when it was demolished.

The site was purchased for the city and naturalistically landscaped by Samuel Parsons Jr. as DeWitt Clinton Park. In 1911, New York Hospital bought a full city block largely of the Hopper property, between 54th and 55th Streets, Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues. Beyond the railroad track, projecting into the river at 54th Street, was Mott's Point, with an 18th-century Mott family house surrounded by gardens, that was inhabited by members of the family until 1884 and survived until 1895.

A lone surviving structure from the time this area was open farmland and suburban villas is a pre-1800s carriage house that once belonged to a villa owned by former Vice President and New York State governor George Clinton, now in a narrow court behind 422 West 46th Street.Kevin Walsh, Forgotten New York: The Ultimate Urban Explorer's Guide to All Five Boroughs (2006), p. 176. From 1811 until it was officially demapped in 1857, the diminutive Bloomingdale Square was part of the city's intended future. It extended from 53rd to 57th Streets between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. It was eliminated after the establishment of Central Park,Gilbert Tauber, "Old Streets of New York": "B" Streets . and the name shifted to the junction of Broadway, West End Avenue, and 106th Street, now Straus Park.Ken Bloom, Broadway: Its History, People, and Places: An Encyclopedia, "Introduction", 2004, p. xiii.

In 1825, the City purchased for $10 clear title to a right-of-way through John Leake Norton's farm, "The Hermitage", to lay out 42nd Street clear to the river. Before long, cattle ferried from Weehawken were being driven along the unpaved route to slaughterhouses on the East Side. Seventy acres of the Leakes', later the Nortons' property, extending north from 42nd to 46th Street and from Broadway to the river, were purchased before 1807 by John Jacob Astor and William Cutting, who held it before dividing it into building lots as the district became more suburban.

The West Side later had its own slaughterhouses, which went out of business in the middle 20th century.

Unity with the city and deterioration

There were multiple changes that helped Hell's Kitchen integrate with New York City proper. The first was construction of the Hudson River Railroad, whose initial leg – the to Peekskill – was completed on September 29, 1849, By the end of 1849, it stretched to Poughkeepsie and in 1851 it extended to Albany. The track ran at a steep grade up Eleventh Avenue, as far as 60th Street.

The formerly rural riverfront was industrialized by businesses, such as tanneries, that used the river for shipping products and dumping waste. The neighborhood that would later be known as Hell's Kitchen started forming in the southern part of the 22nd Ward in the mid-19th century. Irish immigrants – mostly refugees from the Great Famine – found work on the docks and railroad along the Hudson River and established shantytowns there.

After the American Civil War, there was an influx of people who moved to New York City. The tenements that were built became overcrowded quickly. Many who lived in this congested, poverty-stricken area turned to gang life. Following Prohibition, implemented in 1919, the district's many warehouses were ideal locations for bootleg distilleries for the rumrunners who controlled illicit liquor. At the start of the 20th century, the neighborhood was controlled by gangs, including the violent Gopher Gang led by One Lung Curran and later by Owney Madden.Bayor, Ronald H. and Meagher, Timothy J. (1997). The New York Irish, pp. 217–18. JHU Press. .

Early gangs, like the Hell's Kitchen Gang, transformed into organized crime entities, around the same time that Owney Madden became one of the most powerful mobsters in New York. It became known as the "most dangerous area on the American Continent".